Justin Rose cards ace, navigates to 69 on dreary Friday at Pebble Beach

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – He described the day as “dreary.” But Justin Rose, an Englishman, was speaking to the cool, wet weather and is entitled to assess it as “kind of English, I suppose, in many ways.”

Surely by dreary he wasn’t referencing the start to his second round Friday at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. That’s because birdies at his second and third holes and a hole-in-one at his sixth, the par-3 15th at Spyglass Hills, shot Rose up the leaderboard.

A nice place to be for a guy looking for his first PGA TOUR win since the Farmers Invitational three years ago. Since then, Rose has played 67 TOUR events without a win and he’d love nothing better than to end that skid.

“It was nice to get out (early). Some early momentum was great.”

The ace, which was Rose’s third in PGA TOUR competition (and 12th in his life), still had him smiling a few hours later. “A special day always when you manage to have a hole-in-one,” said Rose.

“Really fun to do (that). So, really that was a nice moment.”

A pair of late bogeys softened the enthusiasm, but with a 3-under 69 Rose is 6-under at the halfway mark and will head into the weekend just a few strokes off the lead. That’s the good news. What makes it even better is the fact that most of the names ahead of Rose will play Saturday at either Pebble Beach or Spyglass Hills.

Rose, meanwhile, will play at Monterey Peninsula CC which in Round 1 played to the lowest field average (69.846) of the three courses. Pebble played to 70.981 and Spyglass to 72.686.

But here’s the storyline that usually dominates at this tournament – the weather. With rain and blustery winds in the forecast for both Saturday and Sunday, it’s a safe bet that Rose will use a word more intense than “dreary” to describe the conditions.