Ryan Fox will play the Presidents Cup for the first time at 39, after the closing of qualification at the Tour Championship confirmed the Auckland golfer as one of six automatic selections for the International Team.
The six places were settled on Monday 31 August, the cut-off written into the Presidents Cup qualifying rules, which hand automatic spots to the top six eligible international players on the Official World Golf Ranking once the Tour Championship is done. Players eligible for the European Ryder Cup team are excluded, which is why the International Team is drawn almost entirely from Asia, Australasia, South America and southern Africa.
Fox came through third on that list. Si Woo Kim of South Korea finished on top, ahead of Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, with Fox next and then Tom Kim, Australia’s Min Woo Lee and Adam Scott filling the last three places. It is the first time a New Zealander has made the side since Danny Lee in 2015, and Fox becomes only the fifth from this country to play the event. Frank Nobilo went in 1994, 1996 and 1998, Greg Turner joined him in 1998, and Michael Campbell played in 2000 and 2005.
What changed everything was July. Fox arrived at Royal Birkdale as a player with two PGA Tour wins and a long record of near misses, and left with the claret jug. He closed with a 68 for a 10-under total of 270, one shot clear of American Cameron Young, in a finish the PGA Tour wrap of the final round recorded as a birdie on the last. He was the second New Zealander to win the Open after Bob Charles in 1963, and the third to win any men’s major, with Campbell’s 2005 US Open in between.
Speaking after that win, Fox said he had barely processed it. “I’m not quite sure how I hit that putt on 18. Look, it is a dream come true. Looking at that trophy now, it’s the first time I’ve seen it up close. So it’s pretty amazing,” he said. The victory lifted him 34 places in the world ranking to 22nd and, in practical terms, made his Presidents Cup selection a formality rather than a hope.
That distinction matters to him, because he has been on the wrong side of it twice. Fox was overlooked as a captain’s pick in 2022, when Trevor Immelman named the International side, and again in 2024. The 2022 snub stung most. He was not a PGA Tour member that year but had won twice on the DP World Tour and finished runner-up four times, a season good enough on paper to make the case for itself.
At East Lake last week, before the maths was final, Fox told the PGA Tour that making the team had been “probably the biggest goal of the year”. He also said the group had already knitted together off the course. “Obviously it’s not official yet, but all the extended group outings we’ve had and dinners and stuff like that, we get along really, really well. I’m excited to be part of the team, and hopefully we can do something special this year,” Fox said.
Adam Scott, who will be playing his 12th Presidents Cup and equalling Phil Mickelson’s record for appearances in the event, liked what he saw of the group at the Tour Championship. “To have six of us here this week, I think is a great showing,” Scott said. On whether the form would hold through September, he added, “The momentum is huge. I don’t know how we carry it three weeks on from now, but I think a lot of us are going to be playing before the Presidents Cup, too.”
The teams are only half built. International captain Geoff Ogilvy and United States captain Brandt Snedeker each have six captain’s picks to make, and the two rosters are due to be completed in a joint announcement in the United States on Tuesday morning New Zealand time. Scottie Scheffler, Cameron Young, Wyndham Clark, Sam Burns, Russell Henley and Collin Morikawa have already qualified automatically for the American side.
The match runs from 24 to 27 September at Medinah Country Club’s No. 3 course, west of Chicago. The course has hosted three US Opens and the 2012 Ryder Cup, where Europe overturned a four-point final-day deficit on the Sunday.
Fox joins a side carrying a long losing habit. The International Team has won the Presidents Cup once, at Royal Melbourne in 1998, and has not won since. The 2003 match in South Africa was tied after darkness stopped a sudden-death playoff between Tiger Woods and Ernie Els. The United States has won every edition since, ten in a row.
That record is the reason the current group’s optimism is worth noting rather than dismissing. All six automatic qualifiers made the 30-man Tour Championship field, the showing Scott was pointing to, and Ogilvy inherits a side with a major champion in form rather than a collection of hopefuls.
For Fox, the arithmetic is simpler. He wanted in on merit, and he got in on merit. Whatever happens at Medinah, he will walk in as a player the captain did not have to think twice about.
Are you backing the International Team to finally break the drought at Medinah, or has that ship sailed? Let us know 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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