In many ways, we should have seen Justin Rose contending at the British Open coming. The oldest major championship routinely rewards older players, but at 43, Rose has mostly struggled this season on the PGA Tour. So much, in fact, that he had to qualify for The Open at Royal Troon.

Regardless, Rose has played nearly flawless golf, and it took him 30 holes this week to make his first bogey, which is saying something considering the near whiffs and historically high scores.

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As Rose looks to win his second major championship, you might notice him making a familiar rehearsal move before every full shot he hits. He’s been doing it for over a decade, but what is it all about?

As you can see in the video above, Rose deliberately rehearses his downswing with his left arm dropping straight down his chest. This pumping action gets the club what appears to be quite behind him, before he finishes the rehearsal by rotating hard out of the way.

It may look a little strange, but like many practice swings, it serves an important purpose. Rose told the PGA Tour in 2020 that he is “rehearsing a feel that I want to make.”

“The reason I’m doing that is I’m trying to create the sensation and the feel in my body that I need to hit the golf shot. I don’t want the club to be here in delivery. That’s way too far behind me, but as soon as I bring rotation to the target into play, this feel turns into that impact delivery.”

This brings up a concept that pros and teachers routinely talk about: Feel and real are not the same thing. Rose concedes that he doesn’t actually want the club to be in the positions that he is rehearsing. If he actually dropped his left arm and hands behind him as he rehearsed, he would be coming too far from the inside, or stuck.

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But, Rose understands that when he swings, he will rotate his chest in the downswing, which will naturally bring his hands and arms out toward the golf ball. It’s the same concept that Bryson DeChambeau describes feeling in the downswing to properly shallow the club.

“Once you have made a nice, big turn on the backswing, start down feeling as if your back is facing your target for a beat as you drop your hands toward your right pocket,” DeChambeau says. He feels this, but when he swings and rotates his body, his hands and arms move out toward the ball and are in the perfect delivery situation.

Rose describes this idea as the boat and the water skier:

It’s a little bit like the water skier. If the boat is turning, the water skier gets thrown out. So I’m the boat and the club is the water skier. So essentially, as you’re turning to the left, centripetal force tends to throw the club out. So I’m trying to put the club in a position where I can now turn, and then that club gets a free ride into impact.

So when you see Rose deliberately rehearsing this move before shots at Royal Troon, just know that what he is feeling and what is real in his swing are not the same. That said, Rose and DeChambeau’s feeling of the hands and arms drop straight down in transition is great advice for the rest of us.

“Even though it looks like a technical thought, I’m not really kind of really looking at the exact positions. I’m just trying to create a feel,” Rose said.

Is it the British Open or the Open Championship? The name of the final men’s major of the golf season is a subject of continued discussion. The event’s official name, as explained in this op-ed by former R&A chairman Ian Pattinson, is the Open Championship. But since many United States golf fans continue to refer to it as the British Open, and search news around the event accordingly, Golf Digest continues to utilize both names in its coverage.

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