Justin Rose has 3 runner-up finishes at the Masters. He sees that as a good sign

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Justin Rose, the player who missed the cut 21 straight times to start his professional career, has a knack for seeing the glass half-full.

Rose is 45 — only four players older than him have won major championships — and yet he prefers to refer to his “Indian summer” of playing great golf at this stage in his career. Evidence can be found three months ago when he beat a strong field at Torrey Pines.

He became a footnote in Masters history last year when Rory McIlroy beat him in a playoff, making Rose the only player to have twice lost in a playoff at Augusta National without ever having won the Masters green jacket.

The consolation — fine print, at that — is getting his name etched three times on the Masters trophy because the club lists the runner-up each year. The playoff loss to McIlroy. A more crushing playoff loss to Sergio Garcia in 2017. A runner-up by four shots to Jordan Spieth in 2015.

All that means to Rose is he knows his way around Augusta National, and that's the inspiration he brings to the Masters this year.

“I'm very aware that I've been close here,” Rose said Monday afternoon. “I'm very aware that I've had tough, tough losses here. I also am aware that I enjoy this place. I don't want to feel that those three second-place finishes need to create a different sort of feeling for me.”

The record for winning the silver salver awarded to the runner-up without ever having Tuesday night plans at the Masters Club dinner is held by the late Tom Weiskopf, four times a bridesmaid.

Weiskopf was haunted by coming close without ever winning the Masters, as were so many others over the years. Greg Norman had Larry Mize hole a miracle chip in a playoff in 1987 and blew a six-shot lead to Nick Faldo in 1996. David Duval, who had three chances in a four-year stretch. It's a long, sad list.

There is desire and obsession when it comes to the green jacket.

“I’d say firmly in the desire camp, just because I know that the latter is not going to help me,” Rose said. “It’s probably professional discipline just to keep it in the desire realm. I think I probably wouldn’t let myself go down the other path. Like I said, that probably won’t be fruitful. Professionally, I’m not going to do that.”

Rose had a two-shot lead with six holes to play and Sergio Garcia in the azaleas left of the 13th hole, but the Spaniard caught him and beat him in a playoff. Last year, Rose holed a 20-foot birdie putt on the 18th and needed McIlroy to make bogey from the fairway on the 18th to get in a playoff.

Both times he lost to friends. That doesn't make it easier.

“The key is showing up. The key is to try to be as free as you can in those moments,” Rose said. “Yeah, you have to hope a little bit along the way that it’s your day. It could have been my day in a couple of major championships. Hopefully with that mindset, keep chipping away, my day might still happen where a little bit of something goes my way.”

And now he returns to Augusta National, which holds so much familiarity as the only major held on the same course every year. That's what can make it so difficult to win after coming so close. There's a lot of scar tissue built up over the years.

Rose is leaning on that half-full glass.

“I hope it only boosts my belief that I can go ahead and do it,” he said. "I feel like I’ve pretty much done what it takes to win. I just haven’t walked over the line. I feel like I’ve executed well enough to have done the job. From that point of view, I don’t feel like I have to find something in myself to do something different. I truly believe that.

“No, I don’t feel like it owes me anything. I come here with a good attitude. It’s a place that I enjoy being. There’s certain places you get to and you take a deep breath and go, ‘Right, it’s nice to be here.’ Augusta still is one of those places for me.”

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Justin Rose, of England, and Chris Gotterup putt on the seventh hole during a practice round ahead of the Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Justin Rose, of England, hits from the fairway on the second hole during a practice round at of the Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Justin Rose, of England, warms up on the driving range before a practice round at of the Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Justin Rose, of England, hits from the bunker on the second hole during a practice round at of the Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

HOUSTON (AP) — Lunar love knows no bounds.

Now hurtling home from the moon, the Artemis II astronauts took a poignant page from Apollo 8 earlier this week, proposing deeply personal names for a pair of lunar craters.

Commander Reid Wiseman and his crew asked permission to name one small, fresh crater after their capsule called Integrity and another after his late wife, Carroll. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen made the request right before Monday's lunar fly-around. Wiseman was too emotional to talk.

Carroll Wiseman, a neonatal nurse, died of cancer in 2020.

“Just for me personally, that was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission for me,” Wiseman said from space Wednesday night.

During Apollo 8 in 1968, astronaut Jim Lovell bestowed his wife’s name upon a prominent lunar peak: Mount Marilyn. It was humanity's first trip to the moon and she anxiously awaited his return back home in Houston.

The three Americans and one Canadian of Artemis II are the first lunar visitors since Apollo 17 closed out that grand epoch in 1972, and their crater-naming request temporarily left ground controllers speechless.

“It was definitely a very emotional moment. I don’t think most of us knew it was coming,” NASA lunar scientist Ryan Watkins told The Associated Press on Wednesday from Johnson Space Center in Houston. “There was not a single dry eye.”

Mission Control’s lead scientist Kelsey Young worked with the Artemis II astronauts before launch, quietly helping them choose the two bright, relatively young craters, which they quickly spied once they were close enough to the moon through zoom lenses as well as their naked eyes.

Wiseman said his crewmates came up with the idea and approached him about it while they were in quarantine a few days before liftoff. His response: “Absolutely, I would love that, I think that's just the best. And I said, 'But I can't give the speech, I can't give the talk,'" he recalled during a crew news conference, saying he was too overwhelmed.

Proposed Carroll Crater is at the moon's left limb on the boundary of the moon’s near and far sides, and occasionally visible from Earth. It's rather shallow and approximately 3 miles (5 kilometers) across, according to Watkins. The slightly bigger Integrity crater is completely on the lunar far side.

Their request came shortly after they broke Apollo 13’s distance record for deep-space travelers. All four astronauts wept as they embraced in a group hug.

“We lost a loved one. Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie,” Hansen radioed, his voice breaking. “It’s a bright spot on the moon and we would like to call it Carroll.”

Mission Control fell silent for nearly a minute before replying: “Integrity and Carroll crater, loud and clear.”

The emotion-drenched scene was vastly different from the 1960s and 1970s Apollo moonshots in more ways than one. NASA's Apollo all-male test pilots were for the most part all business and tear-free.

“This is no fault of Apollo,” Watkins said. “I think we're seeing just a more human aspect."

Once back on Earth later this week, the crew will submit the two proposed names to the International Astronomical Union.

Nearly a half century passed between Apollo 8 and the union's sign-off of Mount Marilyn in 2017.

The IAU's Ramasamy Venugopal promised a decision on Carroll and Integrity in about a month, the norm “for straightforward requests.”

There already are 81 astronaut-named lunar features on the group's approved list, including Apollo 16's Baby Ray and Gator, and Apollo 17's Lara named for the lead female character in the 1965 film “Doctor Zhivago.”

Some Apollo-era nicknames didn't make the cut.

Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the moon, dubbed a split boulder “Tracy’s Rock,” after his young daughter in 1972.

And in 1969, Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad nicknamed his touchdown spot “Pete’s Parking Lot.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

In this image provided by NASA, the Artemis II crew, clockwise from left, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Pilot Victor Glover, pause for a group photo inside the Orion spacecraft on their way home on Wednesday, April 7, 2026. (NASA via AP)

In this image provided by NASA, the Artemis II crew captured this image of a portion of the Moon coming into view along the terminator, the boundary between lunar day and night, during a lunar flyby, Monday, April 6, 2026. (NASA via AP)

In this image provided by NASA, the Artemis II crew captured this image of Orion spacecraft pictured from one of the cameras mounted on its solar array wings on Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This image from video provided by NASA shows the Artemis II crew, from left, Commander Reid Wiseman, mission specialist Christina Koch, pilot Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen as they answer media questions during a video conference Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (NASA via AP)