But things changed for Rose in Memphis, Tennessee. He returned to the winner’s circle, becoming the oldest champion since 2021 to win on the PGA TOUR at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, after finding his fit with the driver. Rose took a gamble going into the event, switching into Callaway’s Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond Max driver, which he hadn’t hit on the course at TPC Southwind before play started Thursday. Four days later, Rose put the driver to the ultimate test, hitting three blockbuster tee shots on the perilous par-4 18th at TPC Southwind. He passed with flying colors, winning a three-hole playoff against J.J. Spaun.
“Talking specifically about 18 and that tee shot and just with the confidence that he had in that club, which is crazy to say because he just switched to it, but who knows how he would’ve played that tee shot in the past, but how comfortable he was with the driver to allow him to hit that tee shot three or four times on Sunday I think says a lot,” said Joe Toulon, PGA TOUR rep for Callaway Golf.
After just two practice sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday in Memphis, Rose had made up his mind on the driver without needing to see how it handled on the course.
“(Rose) was looking for something that had a little bit more of a left start and would eliminate a right miss that he was recently struggling with,” Toulon said. “… worked on an option for him that would shift the start line a little bit further left, but let that ball flight kind of hang in there a lot tighter, a lot more consistently and then really it checked those boxes.”
Another big factor for the switch was the jump in ball speed that Rose saw. Ranking outside the top 100 in Driving Distance on TOUR, he gained 4 mph more ball speed with the new driver and ended up 12th in Driving Distance at the FedEx St. Jude, surprising even Rose himself.
Justin Rose on building confidence, being in contention in 2025
“I’ve never been able to cover the left side,” Rose said about the 18th hole at TPC Southwind after his win. “… If I held the driver up a little bit, I probably wasn’t going to run out, and if I turned the driver over, I was going to make the carry, which obviously, that angle that I was able to create to the back left pin was very advantageous.”
A newfound combination of speed and accuracy, finishing 14th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (a contrast from his No. 141 ranking heading to Memphis), helped Rose collect his 12th trophy on TOUR. Rose’s deadline driver storyline in Memphis was only emphasized by his run on big sticks heading into the event. Six different models have made it into his bag during the course of the season up leading up to his win.
Before Rose had even teed it up on the PGA TOUR this season, the Englishman was playing a Titleist GT3 driver while captaining Great Britain & Ireland to victory at the Team Cup on the DP World Tour. But when Rose made it to the U.S. for his first stop of his 2025 PGA TOUR campaign, he opted for the GT2 version of Titleist’s newest lineup and bigstick No. 2.
Driver No. 3 was a unique one for Rose. Teaming up with Collin Morikawa, Sahith Theegala and Tommy Fleetwood to represent the Los Angeles Golf Club in the TGL golf league, Rose was spotted testing TaylorMade’s Qi35 driver on weekday nights in prime time. The Qi35, however, never made it to the course, with Rose switching into a 3-year-old Titleist TsR3 (driver No. 4) for a run that almost culminated in a green jacket, losing to Rory McIlroy in a playoff at Augusta National.
“Post-Masters through some of those tougher tournaments we played, Memorial, U.S. Open, just didn’t drive the ball well enough to do good in those,” Rose added.
Rose returned to the Titleist GT2 for the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday before a jaunt across the pond that included testing the TaylorMade M3 at the Genesis Scottish Open and the TaylorMade M6 at The Open (drivers five and six) before opting to flip back to the Titleist GT3.
“I felt like the reset going into links golf season helped me, and I definitely drove it better in Scotland and The Open,” Rose said of his performance. “A key though was adding a new mini driver into the setup. I started to see positive strokes gained off the tee, put a mini driver in play, which I’ve felt like has been a nice shift for me.”
Ultimately, he found the answer when he made it back to the U.S. for the first leg of the FedExCup Playoffs.
Rose made the right move in Memphis, leading “lucky” driver No. 7 to victory.
