Ryan Fox made a mess of the first two holes at East Lake and then holed a wedge from 135 yards for an eagle at the third, and that single swing turned an ordinary start into a four under par 66 that leaves the New Zealander four shots off the lead after the opening round of the Tour Championship in Atlanta.
Fox dropped shots at the first and the second, and by his own account he was not striking the ball well at that point either. The tee shot at the par four third was not much better, but it stayed on the right edge of the fairway and left him a number he liked. The ball went in.
“Terrible tee shot off one and a terrible one off two as well and then I didn’t hit a great tee shot off three but I hung on to the right edge of the fairway and I ended up with a pretty good number … I was just trying to get myself a birdie putt after those first couple of holes and to see it go in just kind of settled everything down,” Fox told RNZ Sport.
“The rest of the day was actually pretty solid after that so it’s funny, golf just takes one shot sometimes to kind of find it and that was the one shot for me today.”
The round has him tied for ninth alongside Tommy Fleetwood and Adam Scott. Australia’s Min Woo Lee set the pace with an eight under 62 and leads by two from Viktor Hovland, Collin Morikawa and Chris Gotterup, according to the first round leaderboard. World number one Scottie Scheffler is a shot further back at five under, and Rory McIlroy, who was two over after four holes, recovered to sign for a two under 68.
This is Fox’s first appearance at the season ending event, which is limited to the 30 players who finish highest in the FedExCup standings. He qualified with little room to spare. Under the format the PGA Tour now uses, every player starts the week at even par and the tournament is settled over 72 holes of ordinary stroke play, so the man who wins at East Lake wins the FedExCup as well. The tour’s own preview describes it as a straight 30 player shootout, which is a long way from the staggered start that used to hand the leader a two shot head start before anyone hit a ball.
Getting to Atlanta at all is part of a season that has already given Fox the thing he never had. In July he won the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, closing with a birdie at the last to beat American Cameron Young and take the Claret Jug. He is only the third New Zealand man to win a men’s major, after Bob Charles at Royal Lytham in 1963 and Michael Campbell at the United States Open at Pinehurst in 2005. Fox is 39.
The trophy has been travelling with him ever since, and it is in Atlanta this week.
“I’ve got it here this week again … I’ve got a really good friend here who we’re going to dinner with tomorrow so I’m going to take the claret jug to dinner and maybe put a little bit of wine in it for them to have a drink out of, so yeah it’s pretty special to be able to do those things,” he said.
The other thing riding on this week is a place in the Presidents Cup team, and Fox is blunt about how much it matters to him. The International side, which draws from everywhere outside Europe, plays the United States at Medinah Country Club in Illinois from 24 to 27 September. The top six eligible International players on the world ranking when the Tour Championship finishes on Monday qualify automatically, and the remaining six are captain’s picks, as set out on the team standings page.
“That was probably the biggest goal of the year to make that team and I think the extra bit would be to qualify automatically, which I think I should be pretty safe for after this week,” Fox said.
“I gave myself a pretty good chance the last couple [of years], might have been a little bit hard done by four years ago but I’m very excited to be a part of it this year.”
He has been on the wrong end of that call twice. In 2022 he was not a PGA Tour member and was playing most of his golf in Europe, and he found out mid tournament that he had missed the cut for the team.
“I got the call … I was in Montana playing there and you know I felt like I was still probably on the outside looking in, not being a PGA tour member, not playing much over here. But I still felt like I had a shot, I was pretty comfortably inside the top 12 I think on the list and that probably affected how I played that week big time,” he said.
Two years later he did not even get that far. “And I knew in 2024 I’d given myself a good start to the campaign but my PGA season in 24′ was pretty slow and I knew I wasn’t getting the pick pretty early on. I hadn’t played well enough and definitely didn’t deserve it but glad I’m on the other side of it this year.”
It is a fair summary of where Fox has been. He built his career on the European circuit, winning in Perth, Ras Al Khaimah and at the Alfred Dunhill Links before taking the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in 2023. He spent years as the best New Zealand golfer most New Zealanders could not watch live, and only became a regular on the American tour late, with his first win there coming at Myrtle Beach in 2024 and a second at the Canadian Open last year. The Open changed the arithmetic. A major winner is not on the outside looking in at anything.
Three rounds remain at East Lake and four shots is not much ground on a course where 62s are available, as Min Woo Lee proved. Fox will need to keep the driver in the fairway more often than he did over the first two holes on Thursday, but he has already shown this year that he can produce the shot that matters when it is needed.
There was better news and worse news for New Zealand golf on the women’s tour. Dame Lydia Ko is eight shots off the lead after the opening round of the FM Championship at TPC Boston in Norton, Massachusetts, where South Korea’s Sei Young Kim holds the outright lead at eight under par. Ko has three rounds to move up.
Are you following Fox at East Lake, and do you rate his chances of running down Min Woo Lee over the weekend? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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