Justin Rose ready to make return from injury at US Open
Last Updated: 15/06/16 10:16am
Justin Rose hopes his recent back injury could turn out to be a blessing in disguise during this week's US Open and the rest of the season.
The 2013 US Open champion has not played since finishing 19th in the Players Championship last month, missing both the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth and the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village.
"It's been a race against the clock really for me to be fit and ready to play here," Rose told a pre-tournament press conference on Tuesday.
"Since the Players Championship, I've really been working around the clock. I've done everything humanly possible to be here, but there's no doubt my practice schedule has certainly been on the light side, limiting the number of balls I've been hitting. I only started hitting the driver two or three days ago.
"The rough is the unknown quantity for sure. I think if I'm going to get greedy out of the rough, then I'm probably risking something. I think it might play into my hands to essentially take your medicine out of the rough a little bit and make par another way.
"There's going to be situations this week where I'm going to have to make a smart decision and that could well be a variable that I have to assess in game time because it's not something that I've practised."
Rose is one of the late starters for the opening round as he tees off alongside Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson, who finished runner-up at last week's FedEx St Jude Classic.
"I'm coming in fresh, which is the great news," Rose added. "This golf course is going to require a huge amount of patience and I think that having that quiet time to sit back and assess my game and assess the challenge this week could be an advantage.
"Competitive edge, that's obviously a factor, and that's where I'm going to hope that the freshness outweighs the competitive rust. I've been in this situation before. In 2007, I had a little bit of a stop-start year due to a bad back and it was one of the best years of my career.
"I won the European money list that year, played really well in all the major championships, so I'm hoping it's a similar run to that."
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