Ryan Fox keen to finish off an already great year in style
Ryan Fox – smiling all the way to the bank in 2022 – photo PGA of Australia
It has been a long and successful year for New Zealand’s Ryan Fox but he is hoping there is enough juice remaining in the tank for a good finish to the year in Australia over the next few weeks.
One of golf’s biggest movers in 2022, Fox began the year outside the top 200 in the world and is now 27th after two wins and four runner-up finishes resulted in the 35-year-old finishing behind only Rory McIlroy in the standings on the DP World Tour.
Fox has this week’s Australian PGA Championship (in which he enters as the second highest world ranked player in the field behind Cameron Smith) next week’s Australian Open and a pro-am style events at the Cathedral Golf Club in Melbourne remaining on his playing schedule followed by an extended break at home in Auckland before embarking on 2023 with a schedule which will include more play in the USA.
Fox gets the chance to showcase his improved game in tomorrow’s opening round where a large crowd is expected to follow he, Cameron Smith and Adam Scott when that trio hits off at 6.00m Queensland time.
Today, Fox spoke to the media ahead of tomorrow’s opening round and indicated that whilst he is enjoying the prospect of a break after his commitments in Australia over the next two weeks, he is keen to finish the year off in the manner he has been playing all year.
“I hope so,” he answered when asked if there was enough petrol left in the tank. “I’ve tried to take it pretty easy this week, to be honest. The golf game’s in decent shape, so I was just trying to get some rest and I will be straight back to bed after this I think. Yes, we’ll see.
“I haven’t done a whole lot of long haul travel this year. I’ve been based in the UK for the most part, so I don’t know how the body and the brain’s going to cope with the next couple of days. As I mentioned earlier, six o’clock is a pretty early start tomorrow, but I feel like if I can get some good rest tonight, I should be OK. As I said, the golf game’s still in decent shape after the last couple of weeks, so hopefully I can contend this week.
“It should be easy to get up in the next couple of days at least, playing with two Aussie legends. There’ll be plenty of support out there for them and hopefully a few Kiwis out there as well for me. I’ll hopefully wake up and be fine on the first tee tomorrow. I’d love to be in contention come Sunday afternoon.”
When asked if he has been able to come to terms with his success in 2022 Fox would say. “It’s definitely a blur at the moment. Yeah, it still feels a bit surreal. Obviously it’s not on the goals list to finish in the top 10 on the order of merit, to be honest.
“After the last couple of years I had where I was probably more trying to keep a card than finish high up. I guess the big goal at the start of the year was to get another win and I got that under the belt pretty quickly and that just let everything kind of free roll the rest of the year.”
Fox’s progression in the game has been one of the features of world golf in 2022 and when asked what the main differences were he responded: “There’s a few things going on now. Putting has been the big thing this year obviously as you said, but all my other stats have improved a little bit as well, which is kind of a nice thing.
“Obviously it’s been a tough couple of years travel-wise so having that all sort of disappear this year, felt like it went back to normal for the most part. I’ve never been one of those guys that can compartmentalise it that well. If I was struggling a little bit off the golf course, I’d kind of take it onto the golf course and that’s what I felt the last couple of years.
“So in terms of all of that going this year and knowing that when I was away I could get back home and see the family if anything happened or my family could travel and we could have our parents travel up and stuff like that. So that made everything a lot easier and I think that just made it easier to play well on the golf course.
“Probably, the other thing was that I started working with Jamie Gough at The Open last year and that was purely because of COVID. I work with Marcus Wheelhouse at home and still work with Marcus, but he couldn’t travel with COVID, couldn’t get back in the country, so I hadn’t seen him in about six months at The Open – maybe not quite six, maybe four months at The Open – last year and I was struggling a little bit.
“I started working with Jamie and he was travelling most weeks. I think just having eyes on basically every week on tour just sort of kept me on the straight and narrow a little bit more.
With his success this season, opportunities are opening up for Fox in terms of playing in the USA on a more regular basis.
“Obviously, I’ll get a few more starts in the States with those top 50 events, hopefully next year. That actually probably makes my travel a little bit easier. It’s only one flight instead of two or one and a little connecting flight to wherever in the States.
“My family’s probably going to stay at home for quite a while next year and I’ll do a couple of hit and run missions to the States, maybe four or five weeks, which I’ve always kind of enjoyed doing that. Playing four or five weeks in a row doesn’t bother me too much. It will be cool to get that experience over there and hopefully I can build on what happened this year.
“But regardless, to get that opportunity to be able to play in probably all the Majors and a bunch of those PGA Tour events that I grew up watching at home, THE PLAYERS and the Match Play and stuff like that, is going to be a pretty cool opportunity. Obviously I’ll have a lot of European stuff to play later on in the season and feel like I’ve probably got two bites at a PGA Tour card next year.
“We’ve got 10 spots for the ’24 season from the Order of Merit and I’ve also got a chance to play my way on through getting some PGA Tour starts as well. So, it’s going to be an exciting year next year.
Fox will play the Masters for the first occasion in 2023 and like all golfers the prospect is a bucket list item for him.
“I mean, I’ve made bets with my mates before I turned pro, if I ever get to Augusta I’m taking you and then didn’t realise quite how many people I’d made that bet with. Then I remember walking off the green at Dunhill and Tim Barter kind of interviewed me straight away and he goes, “That’s locked in The Masters” and I hadn’t thought about it at the start, I was just trying not to hit it over a fence on those last four holes and going, “Oh, OK” and then sort of started thinking about it from there and got a few things organised, which was pretty nice.
“It’s the bucket list for any golfer, whether to watch it or to play in it. I probably thought it had passed me over a couple of years ago, that I maybe missed my opportunity and at 35 I’d probably be a bit more of a journeyman and never get that chance, but still enjoy what I do.
“Obviously this year’s been a little bit different in that regard and I’m certainly looking forward to all of next year, but definitely Augusta.”
First thing is first however and if Fox can find a way to finish off this year’s schedule in the manner in which he has been playing for so much of it there are more riches in store and the possibility of adding to the three titles he has won in Australia to date, the WA Open, the Queensland PGA and the Perth Super 6’s is a lot stronger than it might have been at the beginning of the year.
There will be a lot of New Zealanders and perhaps even Australians on both sides of the Tasman hoping that the affable long hitter is able to do just that.
