SOUTHPORT, England — Ryan Fox is a British Open champion, but no matter how many times he watches the replay of his 12-foot birdie putt on the final hole or stares at his name on the bottom of a silver claret jug, it will take him a while to realize that.
“I don’t know if it’s something I ever dreamed of. I don’t know if it’s something I ever thought possible,” Fox said after his one-shot win. “But we’re here now.”
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How he got there is what sets him apart from the many other names on golf’s oldest trophy.
Never mind that the son of All Blacks rugby great Grant Fox never played competitive golf until he was 17, or that all he wanted to do was earn a card on tour. Before arriving at Royal Birkdale, Fox had never finished higher than tied for 16th in 28 major league games.
And to think Fox almost quit before he even started.
Fox, in his second year on the Australian PGA Tour, was on the verge of losing his card with two tournaments left in the season when he entered the Australian Masters at Royal Melbourne.
“My dad came over and caddyed for me and said, ‘Why do you play this game?'” And I said, “Well, it should be fun.” But it wasn’t very fun at the time,” said Fox, holding a silver claret jug by her side. “He said, ‘Well, let’s just go out and have some fun this week.’
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He did well enough to keep his card, and soon Fox was on his way to culminating with the putt he had only imagined in his dreams — a 12-foot birdie, the final shot of the 154th British Open, arms raised in the middle of the cup, his face filled with joy and disbelief.
“Everyone practices on the green. You have to putt to win a major or the British Open. That doesn’t happen in real life. It doesn’t feel very comfortable,” Fox said. “It’s certainly a lot of fun to see it go in.”
Royal Birkdale currently has two British Open winners from Down Under. Mr Fox joins Australian Ian Baker-Finch, who won on these links in 1991, who was here this week to promote his book ‘To Hell and Back’.
That wasn’t the case with Fox. He rose slowly and steadily. He has three wins on the Australian PGA Tour, three more on the European Tour (including the BMW PGA Championship) and two wins on the PGA Tour last year, including a playoff victory over Sam Burns at the Canadian Open.
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“Why the slow burn? I don’t know,” Fox said, pondering his timeline. He became a European Tour rookie at age 30, a PGA Tour rookie at age 37, and a major champion at age 39. He is the oldest first-time major champion since Henrik Stenson was 40 years old at Royal Troon in 2016.
“If you had told me my career up until yesterday, when I first turned pro, I would have jumped,” he said. “If it were now, I probably would have killed someone for it.”
Fox showed enough resilience in the final round of the British Open to maintain record crowd expectations until the end.
He was one of four players to at least share the lead, with Scottie Scheffler and Tommy Fleetwood positioning themselves just in front of entering the fray at various points. One by one they fell to the side until the target was Young.
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The American made bogey on the 18th hole more than two hours earlier, hitting the face of a pot bunker on the right side of the fairway and had to take a shot from a greenside bunker that narrowly missed the hole for par. This resulted in a 64, which was his best round of the day. And for a long time, it looked like it would hold up.
“I gave it my all until the end,” Young said after the game. He declined to be interviewed after hearing a roar coming from the practice field as he geared up for a potential playoff run.
Fox birdied four of his final six holes for a 2-under 68. That bogey was just as important. His tee shot on the par-3 15th missed the top of the bunker and landed next to the edge of the lip, moving him into a tie for the lead.
He didn’t have a shot to the pin, let alone the green. He flew off the green and into the fairway, 45 yards to the hole. He threw to 6 feet and made the bogey putt.
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“Even though I probably could have made par, it would have felt a lot better to just come off the green with a bogey,” Fox said.
A birdie on No. 16 caught Young again, and the final test came. The 18th at Royal Birkdale was so difficult that only four of the 76 players to that point had made birdie.
A par will advance to a three-hole playoff. A bogey would give the title to Young, who was runner-up at St. Andrews in 2022 and had a close call at this year’s Masters.
Fox was thinking big.
“I told my caddy Dean (Smith) that we’re going to go for it, we’re going to try to win the tournament, and we’re going to accept the consequences if we stuff it,” Fox said.
It turned out to be that of a major champion.
