SOUTHPORT, England — Ryan Fox stood over a 10-foot birdie putt at the 72nd hole of the 154th Open Championship, the Claret Jug sitting there for the taking, and did what every kid who ever swung a club in a pasture dreams about. He poured it in.
The 39-year-old New Zealander shot a final-round 68 at Royal Birkdale to claim his first major championship by one stroke over Cameron Young, becoming the first Kiwi to lift the Claret Jug since Bob Charles won a playoff at Royal Lytham in 1963 — 63 years ago, just up the road from here.
Fox is the third New Zealander to win a major, joining Charles and Michael Campbell, who took the 2005 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. The son of All Blacks rugby legend Grant Fox, he had never finished higher than T16 in 29 prior major starts. That’s a lot of Sundays spent watching someone else hoist the hardware.
The tournament turned on the back nine. Fox had climbed into contention with a record-tying 8-under 62 on Saturday — the lowest 18-hole score in men’s major championship history, matched this week by Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns. But Sunday was a different animal. A bogey at No. 9 and another at No. 11 dropped him to 7 under and looked like it might sink him.
He birdied four of his final six holes. The one at 18 — after piping a drive down the middle and sticking an 8-iron to within 10 feet — was the dagger.
Young had posted 9 under nearly two hours earlier, finishing off a 64 that included a blistering front-nine 29. He’d started the day seven shots behind 54-hole leader Sam Burns and birdied seven holes to reach 10 under. But his drive at the 508-yard 18th — the hardest hole on the course all week — found a fairway bunker. His open-faced 6-iron from 186 yards caught the revetted face and ricocheted sideways into the fescue. He salvaged bogey, and that was the ballgame.
“I felt like I had a chance to get the second one on the green,” Young said. “It just felt worth the risk.” It wasn’t. He missed a playoff by less than an inch on his fourth shot from a greenside bunker.
Burns, who held a two-shot lead after going 62-65 in the second and third rounds — the lowest consecutive rounds in major championship history — made three straight bogeys at Nos. 4, 5, and 6. One of them came after he drove his ball into a ditch and took an unplayable. He never recovered, closing with a 72 and settling for solo third.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, trying to become the first back-to-back Open champion since Pádraig Harrington in 2008, birdied 16 and 17 to pull within one. His birdie putt from off the green at 18 scooted past the hole. He made bogey, shot 67, and tied for fourth at 7 under with Southport native Tommy Fleetwood, who got the loudest roars of the week walking up the closing hole.
“My dream of winning The Open will carry on, and I’ll continue to chase it,” Fleetwood said. “But stuff like that, walking down 18 and the atmosphere out there, that was beyond stuff that I’ve dreamt of.”
The week’s other storyline was Bryson DeChambeau, who was docked two strokes Friday for improving his lie on the fifth hole. The penalty dropped him from solo second to fifth, and he never got untracked, closing with a 72 and finishing T-14. He declined to speak with media for the fourth consecutive day. Rory McIlroy called DeChambeau’s on-course disagreement with R&A officials and subsequent late-night practice session “performative,” adding, “I’m not particularly fond of him.”
But when DeChambeau stepped to the tee Saturday, the crowd at Royal Birkdale welcomed him with nothing but cheers — a divide between the press tent and the grandstands as wide as the Irish Sea.
The 18th hole yielded just 28 birdies all week against 161 bogeys and 13 doubles or worse. Fox got the last one. The film doesn’t lie.
