Like father, like son — and with ice in his veins. Thirty-nine years after his father lifted the Rugby World Cup, Ryan Fox added a stunning new page to one of New Zealand sport’s great family legacies by capturing The Open Championship on Sunday.
The manner of it only deepened the drama. Carrying the sporting pedigree of an All Blacks great, Fox found another gear when the pressure was at its fiercest. On a final day when four players briefly looked capable of claiming the Claret Jug, it was Grant Fox’s son who seized the moment and refused to let it go.
The decisive scene deserves to come first. The 154th playing of golf’s oldest major was not settled until the last putt from the last group on the last green, a finish worthy of the championship’s long and storied history.
By then, just after 6.30pm on a blustery evening across the seaside links in Southport, Cameron Young had spent more than two hours waiting and watching. His nine-under-par total had looked increasingly like the number everyone else would fail to catch.
Even when Fox stood in the 18th fairway and sent an iron 172 yards through a testing crosswind to within 11 feet, a play-off still seemed the likeliest outcome. After all, only five of the previous 77 players had managed to birdie the closing hole.
But the 78th attempt belonged to Grant’s boy. And Grant, the fly-half famed for his unerring, metronomic boot, built a career on moments that demanded precision. Some instincts clearly travel through the bloodline. Fox set the putter back, released it cleanly, and watched as the ball took a gentle left-to-right path before vanishing into the cup.
Ryan Fox claimed The Open in spectacular style after birdieing the 18th hole on the final day
The New Zealander stayed composed under immense pressure to secure the first major title of his career
Fox sank his putt on the 18th hole to trigger jubilant celebrations at Royal Birkdale in Southport
With two arms in the air, Fox was the Champion Golfer of Year.
‘Wow,’ he said in the immediate aftermath, having turned in a card for a 68 and a 10-under-par total. ‘I don’t really know what to think at the moment.
‘I’ve got a lot of people to thank. First of all, my family, my wife and kids are in Florida at the moment. I spoke to my kids last night, and they said, “Bring back a trophy”. I think this is a pretty cool one to bring back for them.’
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We can stick with the family theme a while longer, because it isn’t just Grant in the lineage – Fox’s maternal grandfather, Merv Wallace, also captained the New Zealand cricket team in the Fifties. With Fox the father to two daughters, one can only wonder what comes next.
But a word on the chasers in the here and now – Young was one behind after a 64, overnight leader Sam Burns was a spot further back with head of regrets, and they collectively stood ahead of a pair of challengers in Scottie Scheffler and a local lad named Tommy Fleetwood on seven under.
Had Fleetwood not bogeyed three in a row in the middle of his round, maybe this would have been his day. Maybe they would have closed the streets here for a year in celebration. But no one could begrudge a win for Fox, a 39-year-old who has walked the hard yards in this maddening game.
Fox became New Zealand’s second champion at The Open after Sir Bob Charles in 1963
The no-nonsense 39-year-old was speechless when reflecting on his triumph
After 14 years on the grind, he had already proven himself more than a familiar name with two PGA Tour wins and three on the European circuit, but he had never been higher than 23rd in the world. Arriving in Southport, he was ranked 56th and as recently as March underwent surgery to remove kidney stones. Men of a certain age can relate.
But then came this, which is to say an uplifting end to a thrilling day. Burns and Young can fight over who had the worst time of it, because Burns, runner up at the US Open last month, started two clear in his pairing with Fox and never turned up. All of the finesse and touch he used in building his lead vanished – he stepped on the fourth tee and went bogey-bogey-bogey and stayed at eight under for the rest of his day.
Young’s round was so very different. No one started better than this American nearly man, who started in 20th position and played the front nine in 29 strokes in the calmest conditions of the morning. For that matter, few did as well as him on the way in, either.
But standing on the 18th tee, at 10 under par, it went wrong. He drove into a pot bunker and then sought to attack the green from 180 yards short, only to thrash his shot into the face of the trap. Playing his third from the adjacent rough, Young’s third went into sand by the green and a bogey gave him an awful lot to think about on the two-hour wait for the later groups to finish.
Thankfully for Young, the wind was up. And when the wind is up on a baked links course, you have chaos and bogeys. Si Woo Kim avoided them for 10 holes and reached 10 under par, meaning he, Burns, Young and Fox all led at some point or other. That he finished on six under told a story about the pressures of leading; that Bryson DeChambeau triple-bogeyed the 11th and capitulated to a 72 was possibly a different story about karma.
Had Scheffler birdied the 18th and reached nine under, who knows what kind of tremors that would have sent through the field. But instead he bogeyed and signed for a 67 and settled for seven under. Perhaps Fox wouldn’t have blinked anyway.
His round was steady in an even-par 34 for the front and a masterful clinic in rising at opportune moments on the back. Birdies at the 13th and 14th gave him his first taste of the lead and two more in the final three holes, when the pulse was thumping hardest, were the crowning moments of a champion.
Written in the stars, maybe, or more likely the DNA.
