What to expect in 2013: No. 2, Justin Rose

Since the Mayans were wrong, it appears the 2013 PGA Tour season will actually happen. There are plenty of big names set to make some noise in the upcoming season (the year kicks off on January 4th!), so we’ve picked our ten guys we think will have huge impacts next season and preview them here. We continue with Justin Rose.

Justin Rose

Age: 32

Career PGA Tour wins: 4

Career major wins: 0

What he did in 2012: It has been a solid last three seasons for Rose, who won twice in 2010, once in ’11 and once last season at the Cadillac Championship, but it may have been his consistency last season that was the most impressive. In 19 PGA Tour events, Rose finished in the top-25 12 times with a win, a second, a third and five other top-10s.

It was only the second time in his career that Rose finished with two top-10s in majors in the same season, with a T-8 at the Masters and a T-3 at the PGA Championship, but his biggest moment might have come at the Ryder Cup (surprise, surprise!) where his 3-2-0 record was highlighted by one of the most clutch finishes in the history of singles matches (Rose made a bomb of a birdie on the 17th hole to keep his singles match against Phil Mickelson all square and then followed it up with a closing birdie on the 18th to gain the full point for the Europeans).

Why we like him in 2013: Because Rose is a breakthrough-style player that has continued to win important PGA Tour tournaments the last three season and seems more and more comfortable on the big major stage.

He will win again this season, there is no doubt about that, but it’s the big events that seem to come easier for Rose (of his four PGA Tour wins, one is a FedEx Cup event, another is a WGC tournament and then you have the Memorial and AT&T National, upper-tier non-majors).

There are two Englishman that are circled this season as the most likely to win a major (the other was our No. 4 in the countdown), but Rose seems like the type of player that can flourish at Augusta National and grind it out at Muirfield.

Rose will be a major champion sooner than later, and I like 2013 to be the year that happens. He’s just too talented not to join that elite club.

Devil Ball Golf – Golf – Yahoo! Sports