Ryan Fox is the Champion Golfer of the Year, and it still sounds like a fever dream. He birdied 4 of his final 6 holes at Royal Birkdale, capped by a 12-foot birdie on the 72nd hole, to finish at 10-under 270 and beat Cameron Young by a single shot at The Open Championship. It's Fox's first career major, and he's just the 3rd New Zealander to ever win a men's major.
Fox lifting hardware and getting the Fore Play treatment as the newly crowned Champion Golfer of the Year.
The finish was brutal theater for Young. He'd already posted a 6-under 64 and had to sit in the clubhouse for over 2 hours watching Fox play the back nine, needing him to slip up. Fox nearly gave him the opening, missing a 10-foot birdie try on the par-5 17th, but he didn't blink on 18. That's the margin between winning a major and watching someone else win it — one putt, one hole, one guy walking away with the Claret Jug.
Fox's caddie Dean summed up the moment about as well as anyone could on the Fore Play pod: you get one putt in your life like that, and Fox buried it. The reaction from the golf world has been the kind reserved for genuinely special sports moments, not just a nice trophy presentation.
Riggs on Fox's post-win sit-down, calling him a great, open interview as the new Champion Golfer of the Year.
Then came the punchline nobody scripted. Fox and his wife reportedly needed a car seat wedged in among carry-ons for the Claret Jug on the flight back to New Zealand, upgraded to first class this time instead of getting stuffed in an overhead bin. And somehow, on that same flight the next morning, was Cam Young — the guy who'd just watched the trophy get taken from him 24 hours earlier.
The Fore Play crew breaking down the absurdity of Fox and Young ending up on the same flight home a day after dueling for the Claret Jug.
You couldn't write it better. Golf doesn't have a locker room or a team bus separating winners from losers — everybody flies commercial, everybody's stuck in the same terminal, and sometimes that means the guy who just had his heart ripped out on 18 is sitting a few rows back from the trophy on the way home. It's a small, weird detail, but it's the kind of thing that makes golf's traveling circus feel more human than almost any other sport.
Fox's win also slots him into some rare air — he's now the 3rd-oldest major winner over the last decade, trailing only Phil Mickelson's 2021 PGA Championship and Tiger Woods' 2019 Masters. For a guy who spent years grinding as a very good, rarely great pro, a Claret Jug at this stage of his career changes the whole conversation. Young, meanwhile, is still chasing his first major, and this one's going to sting for a while — especially every time he remembers the flight.