Scott, Garcia and Rose: Major brothers in arms for a quarter of a century

On Thursday morning, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson fulfilled their roles as honorary starters for the Masters. Between them, they have 11 Green Jackets and have been playing in the Masters since – in Player’s case – 1957.

They connect us to the very beginnings of this tournament, to the likes of Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Gene Sarazen.

The trio of Adam Scott, Sergio Garcia and Justin Rose may not quite be in the same stratosphere, but have nevertheless become fixtures at Augusta National themselves while collecting a pair of Green Jackets along the way.

The odd man out is Rose, but it is actually the Englishman who owns the best record here of the three (minus one rather important detail) and who enters the weekend ideally positioned to add to his sole major title to date, which arrived almost 13 years ago at the US Open.

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It is now inarguable that this represents scant reward for almost a quarter of a century of consistent excellence at the highest levels of the game, and nowhere more so than at Augusta.

His all-time stroke average here is almost a full shot below that of Scott’s and a further half a shot better than Garcia’s.

But while the Australian and the Spaniard know that they can return to Georgia each spring in perpetuity, Rose knows that time is running out for him.

These three men have run their entire careers alongside one another, racking up the major appearances by the year.

Garcia is, by a matter of six months, the oldest. Scott is Rose’s senior by a fortnight. By the end of the summer and another major season, they will all be 46.

Garcia competed in every single major from the 1999 Open Championship through to the delayed 2020 Masters.

The last major that Scott missed was the 2001 US Open at Southern Hills. This week is his 98^th consecutive appearance since.

Rose’s major history dates back to 1998 and his fourth place at Royal Birkdale as a teenage amateur.

It took him longer than the other two to achieve similar levels of consistent excellence, but right now, it appears he may well have the greatest longevity at the highest level.

The Three Musketeers in the Masters

He missed the 2022 Open Championship through injury, ending a 12-year-long streak of playing in every major.

The last time he didn’t play in the Masters was in 2010. Since then, he has recorded three second-place finishes, two of them in play-offs.

One of those was, of course, to the benefit of Garcia, back in 2017.

Between the three of them, they have chalked up 73 Masters appearances. And you could tell as they negotiated their respective ways around Augusta on Friday.

Past champions are applauded on to most tees and receive the additional acknowledgement they deserve from the patrons.

A few others, like Gary Woodland following his treatment for a brain tumour and candid acknowledgement of the PTSD he is still suffering from, receive similar treatment.

Rose is almost in a category of his own – his calm, upright demeanour fits in with the vibe in these parts and he carries himself like the champion he so nearly has become on multiple occasions.

He knows he has the class and the smarts to come out on top – although he will need to avoid too many costly right misses off the tee that have crept into his game so far this week.

Scott also appears serene – and especially at Augusta. He still swings the driver like he did as a younger man and is able to attack the par 5s with the best of them. But for an unpleasant end to his second round that saw him drop three shots in as many holes, he would be very much in contention to repeat his victory in 2013.

Which brings us to Garcia, who has struggled horribly here since winning nine years ago – this will only be his third weekend in gainful employment here since.

He always used to say that he struggled with the course and he has better overall records in each of the other majors, and especially the two Opens.

You might have thought it would be difficult to be tetchy as a past champion here at this stage of his career and yet there he was berating the handful of patrons gathered behind the 5^th tee for a perceived distraction during his backswing. I should know because I was among them.

This was truly PG Wodehouse stuff: the distraction of “the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows”.

And anyway, shouldn’t a LIV golfer be comfortable with a bit of noise while over the ball? Then again, perhaps it was the lack of it that was the problem.

Either way, his tee shot started left, then went considerably more so and the result was unequivocally attributed to those of us watching.

He had arrived on the 5^th on the back of a pair of bogeys and would inevitably add another one here but to his credit he did rally and eventually finished at three over par, a shot behind Scott.

While they get to do it all again twice more, short of something remarkable, their roles over the weekend will be little more than a footnote in their long and distinguished careers.

But for Rose, there is rather more at stake. Denied only by Rory McIlroy’s birdie in last year’s play-off here, he enters the weekend on the first page of yet another Masters leaderboard. Nobody would begrudge him a slightly different result 12 months on.

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