
Imago
RECORD DATE NOT STATED 19th July 2026 Royal Birkdale Golf Club, Southport, Merseyside, England The Open Championship Final Day Ryan Fox NZ poses with the Claret Jug trophy DavidxBlunsden

Imago
RECORD DATE NOT STATED 19th July 2026 Royal Birkdale Golf Club, Southport, Merseyside, England The Open Championship Final Day Ryan Fox NZ poses with the Claret Jug trophy DavidxBlunsden
Right after his win at The Open, Ryan Fox got his phone to FaceTime his family. He got emotional speaking to his daughters, who had asked him to bring a trophy home. When speaking to the media after the round, he thanked his wife for the support and told his daughters that he’s got a trophy for them.
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This was Fox’s breakthrough major victory since turning pro in 2011. And it included a historic round of eight-under 62, which is the lowest single-round score in men’s majors. He even became the first Kiwi to lift the Claret Jug in 63 years. However, none of it would have happened if he hadn’t done one thing correctly: avoiding overthinking.
“I was really happy. I said to my caddie through six or eight holes, I feel a lot better than I thought I would feel right now. Played really solid early, and I had some brush-ups down the stretch. Yeah, to play that last hole how I did, I stood on the tee and said to my caddie, Dean, we’re going to try to win this. I hit two perfect shots. I’m not sure how I hit the putt. As I said, my hands were all over the place. I was just trying to get it towards the hole somewhere. It’s surreal that it went in,” Fox said about the birdie putt on the 18th in The Open’s TV interview, before chiming in on how his pace helped him a lot.
“Yeah, it’s always been see a shot, hit a shot. As soon as I start thinking about it too much, then some bad stuff creeps in. That was the whole process down the stretch. I had some good numbers coming in for iron shots into 16, 17, and 18. I just picked my shot and hit it. Thankfully, I kind of executed them pretty well.”
The Open has had a brutal slow-play issue this year. Veteran Colin Montgomerie noted that playing a round at Royal Birkdale took around 5 hours and 40 minutes to complete. Comparatively, when Lee Trevino won the 1971 Open Championship, he completed his rounds in less than four hours. The Glaswegian said that the spectators hate the slow play and long chats between the caddy and the golfer, which “goes on forever.”
Scottie Scheffler and his group, including Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick, faced scrutiny for the same issue at Augusta National earlier this year. The group took over two hours to play six holes.
Meanwhile, Fox likes to keep it fast-paced. Even his final round took only about four hours and 30 minutes to finish. He teed off at 14:20 local time and finished a little after 18:30. One X user even joked that Fox plays so fast that he sometimes takes the drama out of golf, and that he seemed to want to go to a pub instead of relishing his win.
As the New Zealander pointed out, this quick pace helps him prevent overthinking. He even credited it to his birdie putt on the 18th that got him a decisive win instead of a playoff against the runner-up, Cameron Young. In fact, that’s why he was playing quickly throughout the final round.
“Yeah, I kind of missed that by much, and then I saw the walking commentator sort of look up, and I’m going, oh, no, I’m going to be in trouble here. I didn’t have any other choice but to hit it backwards. I think that up-and-down from kind of 20, 30 yards short of the green, that kept me in it,” he said about his four birdies on the last six holes and the bogey on the 15th. “Then I didn’t miss a shot coming down the stretch. I thought the tee shot on 17 was a yard too far. It was almost perfect. Probably not expecting to birdie 18, but I managed to figure out a way to do it.”
Some golfers like to take their time to analyze every stroke. However, Fox kept it simple, and it helped him seal a one-shot victory at the 154th Open.
Written by
Edited by

Abhimanyu Gupta


