Who were you rooting for on the final stretch of the Open Championship? Me? It wasn’t Ryan Fox. But he won it. And I became quite curious and intrigued about who he is and what he’s all about.
By the way, you know how long it took for him to set up for the winning putt and execute it on the 18th? You know…that most iconic, the most nail-biting, suspenseful moment…the putt that could win it all? You know, the putt that could win the Open Championship, the oldest and most prestigious tournament in golf?
22 Seconds.
He made that putt faster than basically anyone else on the planet who plays this game. Faster as in, on the biggest putt of his entire life, an 11-foot birdie on the 72nd hole with a Claret Jug sitting right there, he read it, stepped up, and rolled it in. Twenty-two seconds. That's it. No fifteen practice strokes, no three trips around the ball, no staring at it like it owes him money. He just hit it.
And it went in.
Cameron Young had already posted a 64 hours earlier and was sitting at the top of the leaderboard, probably thinking he'd done enough. Fox needed birdie on 18 to win outright. Drive down the middle, approach to twelve feet, and then the putt that decided the whole tournament. Ball drops, Fox throws his hands up, and just like that a 39-year-old New Zealander has his first major.
Wait, did you say 39-year-old? Let’s talk about that age for a second, because it matters. Fox didn’t even turn pro until he was 25. He wasn’t a European Tour rookie until 30. He wasn’t even a full-time PGA Tour rookie until he was 37 years old, which in golf years is basically ancient. Guys are winning majors at 22 now. Fox spent his twenties grinding on the Challenge Tour and the Australasian circuit, nowhere near the spotlight, just building a career one step at a time while other guys his age were already famous. He’d never even finished top 10 at a major before this week. Not once.
So how does a guy who took the scenic route to the top end up making the coolest putt of the year?
Honestly, I think it’s the same reason he plays so fast. Fox has said flat out that slowing down would be “pretty useless” to him. He doesn’t marinate in pressure; he doesn’t let the moment get bigger than the shot. On Saturday he tied the lowest round ever shot in a major, a 62, and then came back Sunday and had three birdies in a four-hole stretch on the back nine just to stay in it. He even missed a putt on 17 that would’ve put him in the lead outright, turned to his caddie and just said, “we’re going to have to give it a go.” Then he went and did exactly that.
Seems like that’s his story right there…a guy who didn’t rush his career, didn’t force it, just kept playing his game at his own pace until the pace itself became the weapon. While every other guy on that back nine was probably feeling the walls close in, Fox was playing golf like it was a Tuesday. Quick pre-shot routine, commit, hit it, move on. No time for the moment to get in his head because he never gave it the chance.
There’s also this whole other layer to him being a late bloomer from a legendary sports family. His dad Grant Fox is an All Blacks rugby legend, part of the team that won the first-ever Rugby World Cup back in ‘87. His grandfather, Merv Wallace, captained New Zealand’s cricket team in the 1930s and 40s. So the pressure to be great was always sitting right there in the house, just not in golf specifically.
And golf almost wasn’t the sport, honestly. Fox first picked up a club around nine or ten, just messing around, smacking 7-irons off the lawn into a paddock near his house. Didn’t join an actual club until he was 12. When he finished school he went to the University of Auckland to study law, not golf, and only decided to chase professional golf full time at 25. That’s the version of Fox nobody talks about: the kid who could’ve easily ended up a lawyer, or the next Fox on a rugby field, and instead spent his twenties in relative anonymity grinding through the Challenge Tour and the Australasian circuit while he figured out if he was actually good enough.
Turns out he was. Four DP World Tour wins, including the 2023 BMW PGA Championship, where he beat Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm coming down the stretch. A playoff win over Sam Burns at last year’s RBC Canadian Open. Nineteen wins worldwide before he ever got his hands on a major. He got married to Anneke Ryff in 2019, they’ve got two daughters now, and he splits his life between Auckland and London — which is its own kind of grind most fans never see, chasing points on two different continents while raising a family.
I keep coming back to the pace thing though because it’s such a good metaphor for the whole career. He didn’t get to the PGA Tour fast. He didn’t get his first major fast. But when it actually mattered, when it came down to one putt for the Claret Jug, he didn’t need a second longer than twenty-two to do it.
Some guys need the moment to slow down for them. Ryan Fox just sped right through it.
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