[OK, I’m going to write this piece without mentioning the Bryson DeChambeau second-day rules incident that led some people to claim he had tried to hijack the Open. Oh damn!! I’ve just failed…]
It is hard to think anyone has ever won a major championship by playing the final six holes in more memorable fashion than 39-year-old Ryan Fox managed at Royal Birkdale on Sunday, which meant he finished a shot clear of Cameron Young and became only the second New Zealander, after Bob Charles in 1963, to win the Open Championship. He had won the PGA Championship at Wentworth in 2023 and the Canadian Open last summer, but he had never previously had a top-10 finish in a major. And then he did this.
Young had long finished at nine under par (271) when Fox began his assault down the stretch. He was seven under par when he stood on the 13th tee. By the time he left the 14th green, he was nine under. The 15th was playing 241 yards, a brute of a par-three. ‘Brutish’ would describe the lie Fox’s ball found in a greenside bunker. He had to play out backwards. His third shot was a splendid chip to seven feet. He made bogey. He responded to that by making a birdie on the 16th. On the par-five 17th, he opted for a conservative play from the tee, hitting a driving iron. His ball finished in a nasty position in a bunker 325 yards away, testament to his strength, adrenalin and the parched nature of the fairways. Soon after he had a 10-foot putt for a birdie that somehow stayed out.
The 18th, a 508-yard par-four, had played the hardest hole for most of the week. Young had earlier made a mess of it and escaped with a one-putt bogey. Playing quickly, as is his custom, Fox ripped a perfect drive, 330 yards straight down the middle. From there, it was an 8-iron to 11 feet. From there, it was into the bottom of the cup. “My focus with the putter all day was take a really deep breath before I hit it and just try to hit a line,” Fox explained. “I did that on 18. I was shaking. I don’t know how I managed to keep the putter face square enough for that to go on line but I’ll take it.” He took the acclaim of the crowd as well.
It has to be said that most of the gallery on Sunday were focused on Tommy Fleetwood, who was born in Southport. When he ran off three birdies on the front nine to elevate himself to eight under par, a local-hero champion was a distinct possibility. Three consecutive bogeys from the 9th put paid to that, although he rallied again to finish on seven under. Also on that mark in a tie for fourth (Fox’s last-round playing partner, Sam Burns, finished third) was Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion, whose hopes were effectively ditched by a misbehaving putter.
At the beginning of the week Scheffler was in amiable mood, saying he didn’t think about what his legacy might ultimately be because “I’m going to live my life and then it’s going to end and when it ends I’m going somewhere else”. With reference to his remarks last year about the comparatively fleeting pleasure he got from tournament victories, he joked: “Is that going to be the quote this year? – last year it was what’s the point, this year it’s we’re all going to die?” Except when his tee shot on the 17th on Sunday took an unaccountably bad bounce (hey, but then this is links golf), his ‘conversation’ with his errant ball suggested the attitude of a man who could hardly care more about winning.
On Saturday Fox had scorched around Birkdale in 62, the eighth time that score had been shot in a major championship. He has now joined Xander Schauffele (2024 USPGA Championship) as the only other guy to have won the major in which he did it. The most recent previous winner of the Open to hail from the southern hemisphere was Australia’s Cameron Smith in 2022. The runner-up to him at St Andrews, by a single shot, was Cameron Young. He must be getting a serious antipathy to Antipodeans.