Justin Rose's McLaren experiment is off to a disastrous start

Now isn't the time for Rose to be putting his faith in a golf company that didn't exist until this year. This is a player on the back stretch of his career. He has a finite number of years left to contend for major championships. Every major that passes significantly reduces Rose's chances of winning his second one as he approaches the age of 50. 

This is also a mistake Rose has made before. In 2019, when he was the No. 1-ranked player in the world, Rose switched to Honma golf clubs and quickly dropped out of the top 10 in the OWGR. It took him four years to win another PGA Tour event. 

Despite his checkered past with equipment changes, Rose believes he's learned from those mistakes and isn't repeating them with his McLaren partnership.

"I've learned so much from being brand agnostic for a while that I kind of have my own preference list now. I feel like I'm in an environment where I can take all my preferences to one place where they can execute on that for me," Rose said. "So from my point of view, no, I'm actually looking at what can be better. I'm looking to mitigate risk. Yeah, I've done this once before as well in 2019, obviously, and I kind of learned a lot from that process. So I feel a bit better place now to kind of go down this path."

Rose still has the talent to win major championships, but that won't be true for much longer. Hopefully for the 12-time PGA Tour winner, this risky decision won't hold him back from securing major No. 2.