[PHOTOS: Getty Images]
New Zealand’s Ryan Fox is something of a rarity in modern sport.
The intrigue about the 38-year-old isn’t just because he hails from a country of just 5.3 million people. It’s that he’s never asked for anything, eschews any sense of entitlement, and never has backed down from the chance to prove himself.
“Anything can happen,” he said after his latest PGA Tour success, a playoff win at last month’s RBC Canadian Open.
True statement, that is. But the flip side is, when anything of the positive flavour happens to someone who has flat-out earned it and who carries himself with impeccable character, well, it reinforces what you love about pro golf.
You think you’ve got game? Prove it. Hit the shots, add up the numbers – and take ownership.
To journey through the difficult world of pro golf by proving yourself at every tour stop along the way –OneAsia, Australasia, Challenge, DP World and the PGA – is commendable. To fuel your commitment by never forgetting words spoken to you by a grandfather (heralded Kiwi cricketer, Merv Wallace) and father (iconic rugby player Grant Fox) is what sits at the heart of Ryan Fox.
“My granddad passed away before I started playing golf seriously, but he coached me cricket-wise the whole way through school.
“When I started playing golf, my dad was on the bag. He would always drill into me that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
That it has taken Fox until his 14th year of professional golf to break through for a PGA Tour win might be a surprise to a lot of people – just not to the many of supporters who have appreciated the grit with which he oozes.
That he followed that win at the OneFlite Myrtle Beach Classic in May [above] with another at the historic RBC Canadian Open [below] is vintage Ryan Fox. If, of course, you have studied how he has moved forward in a positive direction since turning pro at 25. He has won everywhere he has played – once on the Asian Tour, twice on the European Challenge Tour, three times on the PGA Tour of Australasia, then four times on the DP World Tour, including twice in 2022 the season when he was named Player of the Year.
Beyond his 2022 wins at the Ras Al Khaimah Classic in the United Arab Emirates and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in St Andrews, Fox piled up eight other top-10s and that went a long way towards earning him PGA Tour membership.
It fulfilled a dream for the Kiwi, but Fox conceded after winning in Myrtle Beach that “I haven’t transitioned probably as well as I would have liked over to the PGA Tour”. He pointed to 2024 when he finished 106th in the FedExCup standings to just keep his card, and early in ’25 the Kiwi categorised his season as “scratchy”.
But Fox had built his career on the ability to grind it out and offset a small parade of missed cuts with healthy runs of top-20s. For instance, between 2014-16, Fox accumulated 37 top-20 performances against just 12 missed cuts.
Another stellar year was 2023 when Fox won the BMW PGA Championship, outplaying Tyrrell Hatton to win the DP World Tour’s flagship event. You can measure the quality of a golf competitor by studying who has finished second to him and with Fox the list, beyond Hatton, includes Cameron Smith, Aaron Rai, Alex Noren, Ross Fisher, Mackenzie Hughes and Sam Burns.
Study, too, that both PGA Tour wins for Fox came in a playoff (he beat Harry Higgs and Hughes at Myrtle Beach and Burns in Canada) and that he now has full PGA Tour status through 2028. They are testaments to the grit that the veteran has brought with him to pro golf on five different tours and four different continents.
All of it speaks volumes for Fox’s resolve to win when the opportunity presents itself. Factor in how he has played well when great rewards are on the line to push his career forward.
For instance, in 2015 Fox advanced through a final qualifier to get into the Open Championship. The next season he finished fourth on the Challenge Tour moneylist to earn his card for the DP World Tour. The fourth-place finish at the Irish Open in 2017 earned the Kiwi another Open Championship berth and the next season he succeeded at a US Open final qualifier at the Walton Heath Club in England.
So it was hardly a surprise when earned his way onto the PGA Tour. Earning his forward progress has been his modus operandi.
“I always deep down felt like I could compete with the guys out here,” said Fox after winning the playoff in Myrtle Beach. “I just haven’t been able to put it together. I’ve been in position a bunch of times on the DP [World Tour]. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but it’s also a good feeling. You know where you want to be.”
The PGA Tour was a long way away, but it’s where Fox always dreamed of being. He just knew it would be a long-shot of a journey and that he wasn’t going to do it half-heartedly.
Grant Fox, who played for the iconic All Blacks when they won the inaugural Rugby World Cup in 1987, told his son that it was the only way to approach the task at hand. “Whether you make it or not, whether you succeed or not, you can always look back with your head high,” said Ryan, echoing his father’s words.
“If you don’t work hard there’s always going to be a [feeling of], What if I did this differently?”
No such worries with Ryan Fox. He knows his inspiring journey was made with hard work and a dogged commitment.
