Justin Rose will have old caddie Mark Fulcher back on the bag when the Olympic Gold Medal winner makes his sixth Ryder Cup appearance at Rome’s Marco Simone Golf Club in a fortnight’s time.
Fulcher and Rose parted ways in early 2019 after ‘Fooch,’ as he’s known, took time off after undergoing heart surgery, before taking up first the bag of Francesco Molinari and then joining Billy Horschel in the summer of 2021.
Rose and Fulcher worked together for 11 year, during which period the Englishman won his first and only Major Championship in the U.S. Open at Merrion, an Olympic Gold Medal in Rio in 2016, and represented Europe in five Ryder Cups, winning three.
“I came to the decision post FedEx but it had been rattling around in my brain for a few weeks prior to that, and it’s good to have him back – it was an easy decision,” Rose told Today’s Golfer at Wentworth. “You asking me about it almost catches me by surprise because, while we’ve only been back working together for a week or so – Fooch came out for some practice with me – it just feels completely normal.
“We were together for so long and had the appropriate amount of time apart as well, you know. We both had the opportunity to go and do different things, experience different things and learn, then come back together with the previous ten or eleven years done and dusted and with a new goal of seeing what else we can achieve. We’re not trying to rekindle anything or live up to what’s been in the past because we have new challenges and it should be fun.”
Fulcher, who previously caddied for major winners Laura Davies and Alison Nicholas, accompanied Rose and the rest of the European side on their reconnaissance trip to Rome earlier this week and, having previously taken issue with an Alan Shipnuck article written prior to the Ryder Cup at Le Golf National in 2018 that claimed that the Ryder Cup was dead with an impending period of United States dominance, is clearly a man who bleeds blue and yellow when it comes to the biennial event.
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