Ryan Fox is nails.
The rugby-built Kiwi has gradually developed into the last guy you want to wrestle with down the stretch of a golf tournament.
Ask the guys he chased down to win the 2022 Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews. Ask Tyrrell Hatton and Aaron Rai, whom Fox ran down with eight birdies in his last 13 holes to win the 2023 BMW PGA Championship. Ask Mackenzie Hughes and Harry Higgs, who watched Fox chip in from 50 feet to put a quick end to a playoff in his first PGA Tour win in 2025 at Myrtle Beach. Ask Sam Burns, whose Sunday 62 at the 2025 RBC Canadian Open was not good enough when Fox hit a 3-wood to 7 feet to win on the fourth playoff hole.
Now the whole Open Championship field – but especially Burns who played with him and Cameron Young who got overtaken by him – know just how nails Fox is after he flung himself into the mix with a 62 on Saturday and stole away with the Claret Jug with four birdies in the last six holes including a clutch 12-footer on the long and difficult 18th at Royal Birkdale.
“To play that last hole how I did, I stood on the tee and said to my caddie, Dean [Smith], ‘We’re going to try to win this,’” Fox said. “I hit two perfect shots. I’m not sure how I hit the putt … 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.
“Yeah, Champion Golfer of the Year has got a pretty good ring to it.”
Nails.
BIRDIE: Fox fast. Everyone should play as quickly and decisively as the man who just won the Claret Jug.
BIRDIE: Cameron Young. While so many were struggling in contention, the American played a nearly flawless final round until his drive found a fairway bunker on 18, his second was thinned into the sod wall and his par attempt from a greenside bunker barely missed for his only bogey in an otherwise victory-worthy 64. He sensed hours before it was proven true that it wouldn’t be enough (one day soon in a major it will be). Didn’t diminish his heartbreak when he heard the roars from the range that delivered the news, like Ernie Els slumping his shoulders on the putting green at Augusta in 2004.
BIRDIE: Baby bump. Beware the player who shows up to a tournament with no expectation after just coming off a paternity break. (Remember Danny Willett at the 2016 Masters?) Sam Burns had no intention of playing the Open until his wife gave birth to their second child, Belle, earlier than expected. He doesn’t even like links golf. Next thing you know the U.S. Open runner-up with no significant history of playing well on links shoots 62 on Friday en route to his third major top-10 of the year. His day is coming.
BIRDIE: Scottie Scheffler. The world No. 1 reset his cut streak at one with a T4 in his Open title defense. After failing to reach the weekend at the Scottish Open for the first time in 78 events dating back to the PGA Tour’s 2022 playoff opener, Scheffler articulated his disappointment this way. “I don’t think it hurts as much as coming close to winning and finishing second … but missing the cut is significantly more frustrating is how I would describe it,” he said. Maybe that finishing bogey to avoid a T2 at Birkdale saved a little frustration, but it’s doubtful.
BOGEY: Bryson DeChambeau. Golf is a gentleman’s game and Bryson did not act like one when he needed to most. Maybe he can sit down and have dinner with Dustin Johnson before the next LIV event and learn how to handle a harsh ruling in a major. Nobody accused DeChambeau of cheating, but he reacted as though they had when he was assessed a penalty for what looked like a glaring infraction of the rules. Whining about it, threatening to quit and reportedly asking to call the U.S. president for intervention leaves a stain almost as damning as cheating. “Accept the rule with equanimity, say I was in the wrong and carry on,” Brandel Chamblee said. Equanimity is not in DeChambeau’s personality portfolio.
BIRDIE: Golf Channel. Analysts Chamblee, Eamon Lynch and Paul McGinley pulled no punches and articulated what DeChambeau had done to violate the rulebook by improving the line of his swing as well as violating the rules of decorum. NBC’s Kevin Kisner started fine on Saturday’s broadcast about Bryson stomping in like “a WWE wrestler … high-stepping through the high grass” but then whiffed when he lamented the lack of a walking official weighing in as his big takeaway.
BIRDIE: Tommy lad. As our Matt Cooper wrote, Tommy Fleetwood is beloved and adored in his hometown, and he put up a grand effort under intense pressure to give his fans what they wanted with a T4 finish. Golf needs more gentlemen like him.
BIRDIE: 62. That magic number has gotten pretty cheap these days, especially at Royal Birkdale, which has now produced half of the eight lowest scores in major championship history with Lucas Herbert, Burns and Fox joining Branden Grace (2017) and the rest of the 62 clan. Fox and Xander Schauffele (2024 PGA) are the only ones to convert the record score into victory. A 61 or 60 or 59 is coming somewhere soon. Bet on it. These guys can’t be contained.
BIRDIE: Morning movers. Herbert went from T25 to the lead and Burns from T106 to T5 after early 62s on Friday. Fox went from T52 to second after a morning 62 on Saturday. Young went from T20 to clubhouse leader with an early 64 on Sunday. It paid to wake up and not be too close to the lead at Birkdale.
BIRDIE: Brown. Not England’s Dan Brown, though he deserves annual consideration in your pool as an Open specialist as his first-round 66 and top-20 finish attested. The color brown is a glorious sight at an Open. If you’ve never played links golf, it might be hard to understand the joy of playing a toasted links that’s full of fire and challenges you in all the best ways. Birkdale was a proper links, fully baked into a golden state of delicious imperfection that allowed players to figure out their own best ways to handle it. Not every great course is at its finest when it’s as lush and green as Augusta National.
BOGEY: Momentum. If someone had offered a five-man parlay of the hottest players in 2026 including U.S. Open winner Wyndham Clark, PGA champion Aaron Rai, three-time winner Matt Fitzpatrick, Travelers champ Viktor Hovland and surging Scottish Open winner Tom Kim, you probably would have felt good about winning some cash. They probably expected to leave Birkdale with some cash as well, if not a trophy. They all left early with nothing.
BIRDIE: The Fab Fourteen. Scheffler and Burns topped the list of 14 players who made the cut in all four 2026 majors, tying for the cumulative total of 20-under each despite neither picking up a trophy. The only one of the group to win one was Rory McIlroy. The other season cut-slammers were Young, Ludvig Åberg, Hideki Matsuyama, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Justin Thomas, Chris Gotterup, Corey Conners, Ben Griffin, Kurt Kitayama and Michael Brennan.
BIRDIE: Jackson Suber. The American had never started an Open, never played links golf and never even been to Europe before showing up at Royal Birkdale and shooting 65 to take the first-round lead and 69 to head into the weekend in the final pairing. Sometimes experience is overrated and you never know that something suits you until you try it. Unfortunately, a Sunday 74 cost him a return at St Andrews next year and a potential spot in the Masters.
BIRDIE: The Open Commitment. In the wake of unseemly fan behavior toward players at last month’s U.S. Open and last fall’s Ryder Cup, the R&A introduced an Open Commitment code of conduct for spectators. In short, it asked fans to respect the players, the links and each other. Specifically, it asked fans to remain quiet and still while players are preparing for and playing their shots; to not call out to players inappropriately during play; and to “celebrate great play in a fair and sporting manner.” It warned that “serious or repeated breaches of the Open Commitment will not be tolerated and may result in removal from the championship grounds without refund.” That may work in England, but a simple pledge ain’t going to cut it in New York.
BOGEY: Birkdale heroes. So much preview ink was spent feting 2017 Open champion Jordan Spieth making his return to Birkdale and Justin Rose playing his fourth Open at the scene of his teenage debutant theatrics where he holed out his final shot as an amateur to finish fourth in 1998. Some attention was even paid to 2008 Birkdale winner Pádraig Harrington coming in as the reigning U.S. Senior Open champ as well. Our Matt Cooper noted that Spieth played hurriedly on Friday, like an embarrassed pro-am hacker eager to vacate the stage. At least they’ll always have those better memories after forgettable reunion weeks.
BOGEY: Drone warfare. Robert MacIntyre is no fan of the drones that have become an essential part of television coverage in golf. He reprised his memorable heated battle with the “wasps” during his breakout RBC Canadian Open victory in 2024. When he stepped to the first tee on Thursday, MacIntyre refused to play until the air was cleared of the buzzing nuisance above him. “Aye, I could hear it coming in, and I’m like, please, just keep flipping over the top of me, and it just sat above me,” he said. “Then they announced me on the tee, and I was like, ‘I’m not hitting until that drone is out of the way.’ I don’t know who spoke to it, but someone did.”
ALBATROSS: Last-Chance Qualifier. This is now the greatest major qualifying category ever, with 12 guys on site Monday playing in front of engaged practice-round crowds rooting for a former Morrisons supermarket delivery driver to beat out various PGA Tour winners and amateurs for the final spot in the field. Why doesn’t every major do this now? Can you imagine, let’s say, all the unqualified PGA Tour fall series and opposite-event winners, the guys who finished 31st in FedEx Cup points and 51st in the end-of-year Official World Golf Ranking and runners-up in the various amateurs playing Augusta National on Monday of Masters week for one spot in the field? This is my newest wish for competitive golf now.
BIRDIE: Joe Dean. There simply could not have been a more perfect winner of the inaugural Last-Chance Qualifier. Dean’s story of perseverance in his long journey to the DP World Tour that included four years of delivering groceries while he scrounged up enough money to make it through all three stages of Q-School and to Kenya where one runner-up finish changed his career trajectory is the kind of story that open-qualifying events are made for. He slept in his car before the qualifier and married his caddie on Tuesday after the Open because “it was cheaper.” He missed the cut, but his story still resonates.
PAR: Prize fund. The Open Championship purse still lags behind all the other majors despite the R&A’s emphasis to stage the events where they can maximize ticket sales. This year saw only a modest boost from $17 to $17.75 million (the winner received $3.2 million), making it the only 15th-largest purse on the PGA Tour. All three of the other majors offer prize funds exceeding the PGA Tour’s $20 million signature purses. The R&A prioritizes spending in other needed places, which is admirable. The players don’t really need it, although some air conditioning might be useful.
BOGEY: Course changes. Royal Birkdale has long been a favorite links among Open competitors, so the club’s aggressive changes to five holes – including a completely new long par-3 15th – struck everyone as a little out of place with the rest of the course. “You look at 14, 15, 16, those green complexes and the amount of slope that they have off of them are pretty severe and quite challenging,” said Scheffler. “It was pretty obvious like, ‘Oh, these are the holes that got redone because they look like they’re on a different golf course.’” Not the feedback you want to hear.
BOGEY: Hospitality towers. Instead of being nestled in dunes, the new par-3 15th green was overwhelmed by the massive, multi-storied hospitality unit placed behind it. It may be a welcome vantage point for well-heeled patrons, but its looming presence overshadowed the green and was out of context – a little too Phoenix and less Open with raucous drinking behavior that distracted at the adjacent 14th green. As John Hopkins wrote in GGP+, “a golfer hitting from the tee of this hole [the 15th] looks as though he is aiming at the side of a marooned cruise ship. Happily this income-generating monstrosity, so necessary to set the tills of the R&A clattering, will soon be gone.”
BIRDIE: Royal Birkdale and Southport. The links-rich area teeming with shops, accommodation, convenient train service and nearby attractions pulled out all the stops to play gracious hosts to crowds that exceeded a record 300,000. And the course itself is arguably the best for spectators, with walkable loops on each nine and dunes high enough to provide great viewing while not feeling hemmed in.
BIRDIE: Rai and Harrington. Two of this summer’s most well-liked major winners were honored for their largesse at the Association of Golf Writers dinner. Rai received the President’s Quaich from AGW president Lewine Mair and the PGA champ impressed with his quiet modesty. Harrington received the Michael Williams award for outstanding services to golf and spoke amusingly and at some length (no surprise there). Euro Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald collected the AGW’s Arnold Palmer Open Award while Rory McIlroy received the Golf Writers’ Trophy.
BIRDIE: England.The home faithful were deprived a World Cup and a home hero, but on the weekend England did reclaim Roger Bannister’s mantle as the world’s fastest miler when Josh Kerr eclipsed a record that lasted since 1999 with a time of 3 minutes, 42.66 seconds in London. That’s about as long as it takes some golfers to make a putt.
BOGEY: Three Lions. England’s late collapse to Argentina in the World Cup semifinal on the eve of the Open was a blessing in disguise for the Southport event. Understanding just how far down the list of relevance golf is compared to football in England lets you know that if the Three Lions had advanced to Sunday’s final – which started just more than an hour after the Champion Golfer of the Year was decided – it would have posed a bleak contrast. Instead, the stands were filled Sunday to cheer Fleetwood home and Fox to pick up the Claret Jug.
BOGEY: Amateurs. None of the 10 qualifiers in the field made the cut, leaving the silver medal for the lowest amateur unclaimed for the third consecutive year. The last amateur to make the weekend at the Open was Christo Lamprecht in 2023 at Hoylake.
BIRDIE-BOGEY-BIRDIE-BIRDIE: Mind the gap. We have to wait 260 days before the next major championship tees off at the Masters. The PGA at Frisco sure looks out of place in an 2027 major lineup of Augusta National, Pebble Beach and St. Andrews.
