He was playing in Australia, but in a very real sense Justin Rose also came home to Europe on Sunday. And what a welcome Europe Down Under gave him, welcoming with open arms his return to the tournament circuit where he started his career.

What a rollercoaster ride Rose's career has been. At 17 he almost won the British Open Championship as an amateur at Royal Birkdale in 1988 and turned professional the next day.

It was only then that the downside of being a professional golfer first hit him. He endured 21 missed cuts before he made one but showed his mettle as a person by being unfailing polite and accessible even as he trudged disconsolately from one tournament venue to the next.

He probably didn't see it as such at the time, but that long, unhappy trawl throughout Europe and beyond might have been a blessing, albeit one in a very heavy disguise. Failure can be just as instructive a teacher as success -- indeed an argument could be made for it being more so.

Nonetheless, it was a wilting Rose who got his card back for the 2001 season having gained it and lost it again in 1998 and 1999. He has never been within a country mile of needing to return to that theatre in southern Spain where dreams are made and shattered in equal measure.

The young Englishman who learnt the game in his youth in his home country after spending the first five years of his life in South Africa was something of an infant prodigy. He hit his first ball before he passed his first birthday, encouraged to do so by Ken, his father and first coach.

He broke through the 70 barrier for the first time when he was 11 and proceeded to win most of the best things in the amateur ranks. He was a celebrity - and regarded as both a freak and force of nature as well - before he passed the age of 14 and played in the Walker Cup when he was barely 17.

Golden things were expected of the young man from Fleet, in Hampshire, one of the pleasant suburban counties that encircle London, and to a dramatic point he came up with the goods.

But there was a school of thought when he turned professional after that deed of derr-do at Birkdale that he had turned to the paid ranks a tad too early. The boy was still a boy, they said, and they were vindicated in their view when he made that long and tortuous journey towards the light from the darkness of all those missed cuts.

In the end, it was a bittersweet occasion for the Rose family when Justin had his first European Tour victory in the Victor Chandler British Masters in 2002 after an epic battle with Ian Poulter, his closest friend on tour. His father was able to witness that victory but not long afterwards succumbed to the leukemia he had been fighting with enormous courage for a number of years.

The sight of Ken sitting in the back of the press center as his son conducted his first press conference as a winner in British was enough to warm the heart and induce prickling in the eyes. Justin had already won the dunhill championship earlier that year in South Africa, but this was the story of a young hero coming home. The boy had, at last, become a man in a man's world.

He won two other tournaments that year in South Africa and Japan and eventually climbed to 36th in the world, but even so there were those who doubted his wisdom in transferring his playing base to the United States in 2004.

Justin Rose won the MasterCard Masters on Sunday. (Greenwood/WireImage)

Some wise and seasoned critics were only being kind when they suggested that Rose might be better off hardening his game up in Europe, but the young man himself remained convinced that it was only by playing in what is still the strongest tour in world golf that he could give himself of becoming the player everybody -- and he himself, modest soul though he is -- thought he could be.

His highest world ranking was 36th in the fall of 2003 and although he had dropped down again to 69th in the world before his triumph in Australia, he leapt to 51st after it. This victory would have buoyed his confidence to no end and if he kicks on now and improves on his best PGA TOUR season-ending position of 47th, achieved last year, he will finding himself playing in some of the world's great tournaments.

Once there, he can start planning the second part of the rest of his life. There were those who thought that Rose could be one of the greatest European players of his generation before he even won a penny at the game.

Perhaps now, he will begin to show those who feted him that they were right. He has the game and, after three years in the United States, he has the mental toughness to carry it through. We fancy that the next 12 to 18 months will be the making of him, the time when he finally trains on and makes himself one of the best of the best.

Having suffered some cruel blows in his eight years as a professional golfer, he deserves a few breaks, heaven only knows. What's the betting that, come a year in September, he will be a member of Nick Faldo's Ryder Cup team? We wouldn't bet against it.