Weekend Wrap - Crazy Like A Fox Edition

Can we agree that, notwithstanding the seemingly iconic venues involved, that it was quite a strange troika of majors after Augusta?  To wit, if Aaron Rai and Wyndham Clark had the viewing public a wee bit cranky, I don't think Ryan Fox was quite what the situation demanded.  Although, leaving Wyndham far to the side, Rai and Fox at least are two of the most genuine guys out there....  And, as a blogger prone to typos, what's not to like about the confluence of monosyllabic winners.

Let's lede with Geoff's British Open Championship by-the-numbers:

• -10: Winning score of Ryan Fox

• 270: 72-hole score by Fox

• T52: Fox’s position after 36 holes (Even par)

• 2nd: Player from New Zealand to win (Bob Charles, 1963)

• 64: Final round score by Cameron Young (2nd)

• 11 ft. 0 inches.: Stimpmeter speed

• 7,157: Final round yardage (7,223 max)

• 11 ft. 0 inches.: Stimpmeter speed

• 4 mm: Green mowing height

• 0.73 inches: (.001 inches firmer than Round 3)

• 2:20: Official starting time of the final Burns/Fox pairing

• 2:35: Actual starting time of the final pairing

I caught it on tape, so had no clue that tee times ran late, though presumably unrelated to events in New Jersey, although I'm still getting over that third-place England-France match.  I could enjoy soccer if only I could rely upon their being ten goals per game....

Ryan Fox would wake up in the New Zealand night to watch The Open and dreamt of merely playing the world’s oldest professional championship.

“And now to be an Open champion, to be the Champion Golfer of the Year, it's unbelievable, surreal, crazy,” he said moments after an electric finish at Royal Birkdale. “I don't have enough words in my vocabulary to explain it, to be honest.”

After tying the lowest score ever shot in a major early in Saturday’s third round, the 39-year-old battled Sunday’s tougher conditions to reach the disaster-laden 18th. There, he improbably held off Cameron Young by a stroke to register the greatest 36-hole comeback by position in major championship history. Fox’s 130 weekend total tied Ian Baker-Finch’s record for low final 36 holes.

A late starter by modern standards and the son of rugby great Grant Fox, Ryab picked up his first club at 13. After toying with rugby and cricket in high school, he got serious about golf at 16 and dreamed of Sunday’s scenario. Sort of.

“To cap it off with a putt -- everyone practices on the green, I guess, you’ve got to a putt to win a major championship, to win The Open,” Fox said. “It’s not like that in real life. It’s not a very comfortable feeling. It’s certainly very enjoyable when you see it go in.”

I love that photo above, as the rest of us can only dream about being in that position at impact....  But I'll long remember how he played that 18th, a scorecard killer for sure:

With final-day wrecks breaking out all over the dead (ish) fescue fairways and heavily revamped links ahead of this championship, Fox kept up his crisp iron play and hot putting that started with

Saturday’s third 62 of the week (and eighth in major championship history). Arriving at the 18th after three back-nine birdies, Fox needed another on the brutal closer to avoid a playoff with Young, who’d already returned to the range to prep for a playoff. Young finished over two hours before Fox and third-round leader Sam Burns walked up the 18th fairway.

 Fox smoked a 331-yard beauty between the revamped bunkering to set up a slim chance at avoiding the first aggregate playoff since 2015 (set for the 14th, 15th and 18th holes). The landingarea played narrow due to the dry conditions and wind out of the left, with only 445 drives finding the tight turf all week. Just 33% of second shots (155/467) even hit the green in regulation. Only 27 birdies had been made at No. 18 all week.

“That drive is not a very comfortable tee shot, obviously, and to hit it in the fairway and give myself a chance was huge.”

Factoring in adrenaline and the wind direction capable of taking the second to a pin cut 25 back and six from the right edge, Fox drew an ideal 176-yard nine-iron.

“I did say to my caddie, Dean [Smith] on the tee that we were going to take it on, that I was going to try to win the tournament, and I’d live with the consequences if I stuffed it up.”

Fox flushed the approach.

“I think I screamed to it, ‘Please be good,’ in the air, and it was.”

One can only assume it's not THAT Dean Smith....  But how perfect, a golf nobody playing his way to a life-changing win and, at crunch time, taking it on.  He earned it for sure, and that's even before I mention his dreamy pace-of-play.

This guys is piling up the near misses, but it won't be long now:

Finishing just over two hours ahead of Fox, Young’s 64 started with three birdies, finished the front nine in just 29 strokes, and nearly played a bogey-free round on the championship’s windiest afternoon. Leading at 10-under after a 17th-hole birdie and with 54-hole leader Sam Burns faltering after reaching 11-under par, Young drove into the 18th hole’s fairway bunker. The Players champion earlier this year thinned his second into the bunker face and found his ball in the rough. He then dunked the next shot into a greenside bunker, where he was fortunate to salvage a bogey and get in at nine-under. Young gave himself little chance at that point.

“I thought 10 [under-par] had a decent chance,” Young said.

Still, his final round 64 came up one short of the all-time best closing score in The Open after Henrik Stenson’s 63 at Troon in 2016. Young also posted a closing 65 in 2022 at St Andrews.

How great was it?  Young walks off No. 17 at -10 and then faces the hardest tee shot in golf, and agonizingly catches a bunker.  The bogey that followed had me formulation adjectives in my mind from the surname Spieth   Ultimately it didn't scale quite to Spiethian heights of farce, but it was still an all-world five, leaving us (and, more importantly, Cam) with a few hours to speculate.  But it wasn't just Cam that thought -10 could be useful....

More than two hours later Fox comes to the same tee tied at -9, but having frustratingly failed to utilize his last legitimate birdie opportunity.  Then he does what he did, and that bounce of their tee balls on the burnt-out 18th fairway is your Open Championship, at least after Fox hit a sterling approach and made his 12-footer.

One of your humble bloggers amusements this week, especially as the final group formed, is their differing reactions to the environment, which Fox embraces:

“I’ve just always loved links golf from the first time I played it,” Fox said moments after he’d

gotten his first up-close look at the Claret Jug. “I just love the creativity needed. I think growing up in New Zealand, we play in a fair bit of wind, so getting to do that and having to control your ball and hit some not proper golf shots or not normal golf shots is really cool, and I enjoy -- that’s probably what I enjoy about golf and links golf the most.”

“I feel like I’ve played well in Opens before but just never really put four rounds together. I probably wouldn’t say I put four rounds together this week either. I put three together, obviously, to give myself even a chance today after yesterday’s round. You’re not expecting that going out, even though you feel like you can shoot a low score early, to go out and shoot 62 and go from 52nd or whatever I was into the last group. That doesn’t happen very often.

“And to go out with the pressure on, with a chance to win The Open, and to actually do it -- I didn’t know what I was going to feel going out there today. I did say to my caddie a few holes in, I feel better than I thought I was going to feel, but I probably still didn’t feel that comfortable. But got a little bit more comfortable down the stretch.”

Compare and contrast with his playing partner yesterday:

“I'm not a huge fan of links golf,” Burns said after the round. “I just haven't played well on links golf. It's not something I'm very familiar with. I get to do it maybe once a year.”

Can someone tell Sam Burns that he could play links golf more than once a year if he wanted to? Anyway, he went on.

“Like yesterday, I hit a really – not a bad shot on 17,” Burns continued. “I hit a 3-iron in and was trying to hit it just left of the green. And I get up there and it's in the left side of the lip and I have to hit it backwards. That kind of stuff is frustrating to me. You feel like you've hit a decent shot, and you get up there, and the next thing you know you're hitting it backwards. That's kind of been something I've tried to work on, playing links golf is trying to be more accepting and (I’m) still getting there. But yeah, I think the main thing is you just try to come out and execute to the best of your ability and learn to accept whatever the outcome is.”

Doesn't make him a bad person, does it?  That's from a Fried Egg post that makes the point by comparing Burns to the great Tom Watson, who initially hated links golf every bit as much as Sam.  Obviously with one of the four majors on links, you'd think they'd put a little more effort in, although obvious Burns was not able to play the Scottish this year, as life got in the way in a beautiful manner.

Do you remember those standardized tests from school days in which one has to pick the item on a list that doesn't belong?  This list just acquired it's version thereof:

• 2017: Jordan Spieth
• 2008: Pádraig Harrington
• 1998: Mark O'Meara
• 1991: Ian Baker-Finch
• 1983: Tom Watson
• 1976: Johnny Miller
• 1971: Lee Trevino
• 1965: Peter Thomson
• 1961: Arnold Palmer
• 1954: Peter Thomson

Or Finchie got company from his part of the world....

I'm not the only one that found it a strange week:

Why Ryan Fox was the perfect winner for a strange Open week

 Not that they really pay off that header....

Ryan Fox was not the victor the scriptwriters had in mind for this 154th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. In fact, he might arrive in the winner’s circle as the most compelling evidence against the scriptwriters, beating out hometown kid Tommy Fleetwood and major-winner-in-waiting Cam Young and new-dad Sam Burns en route to his narrative-altering win.

And yet there was something fitting about his run to the title on Sunday evening at this Open Championship, about the tears that fell in scoring as he talked with his parents shortly after that victory was complete. An exceedingly nice guy and exceedingly normal golfer winning a week in which golf showed its impressive penchant to be anything but nice or normal.

I'm going to dive into the Tour Confidential panel here, then circle back on the D.A.D. man.

Ryan Fox birdied four of his last six holes to shoot 68 and win the Open Championship by one over Cameron Young and claim his first major title. How did Fox, who shot 62 on Saturday, rule the weekend and win the Claret Jug?

Josh Sens: As in every Open, conditions mattered and Fox took advantage of some relatively

benign ones on Saturday. More importantly, though, he stayed patient. The quirks of Royal Birkdale drove some guys crazy this week. Fox, by contrast, stayed cool even when he got a couple of terrible bunker breaks coming down the stretch. That was especially impressive, as was the way he stuck with his (wonderfully) brisk routine. A lot of guys get out of rhythm when they’re trying to close. Fox stayed in his rhythm.

Zephyr Melton: While others wilted under the pressure, Fox thrived in it. On a day when seemingly every contender struggled to hit the shots when the lights got the brightest, Fox did not. It may seem overly simplistic, but the best golfers are the ones who can perform under pressure. No one was better than Fox in that regard on Sunday.

Jessica Marksbury: Agree with the great points from my colleagues here. Fox hung in impressively on Sunday — and he suffered some adversity too. That chip shot from behind the green on 9 that came right back to his feet could have really derailed him. But he managed to get the next shot up and down for bogey. That kind of mental fortitude is everything on a major championship Sunday.

Good point from jess on that 9th hole mess up, though most of us were struck by his handling of the horrible lie in the 15th hole bunker, where he just got on with things.

Any issue with three 62s at Royal Birkdale? (And before this week, Branden Grace had the first major 62 ever at the 2017 Open at Royal Birkdale.)

Sens: It’s hard to take issue with scores when everyone’s playing the same course. But I do wish they had found a way to keep some of the juice in the rough, despite the dry conditions. Ideally, I think, there should be more punishment for driving it wildly in an Open than there was this week.

Melton: I don’t have an issue with it. Despite the flurry of 62s, the winner still took 270 strokes, one less than at Aronimink, which got rave reviews from fans. While low scores were out there, they had to be earned. Good shots were rewarded and bad shots were punished. That’s all you can ask for.

Marksbury: No issues with the low scores. Sometimes the overseas weather bestows some gifts. And, as we witnessed, the course was still capable of baring some teeth.

I suspect that they were as surprised as we were about how the rough played.  While admitting how hard it is to get things right, I was frustrated by the softness of the greens.  We heard all week about controlling the run-out on the ball, but at the same time the greens were target practice, with balls spinning back.

Still, with three 62's, one would have expected the winning score to be further under par.  And the place looked tough enough for guys like Sam and Si Woo coming down the stretch.

Shall we spend a few moments on Bryson?  First the TC's muddled take:

Before Fox lifted the Claret Jug on Sunday, Bryson DeChambeau was the talk of the tournament with his Friday penalty and the dramatics that followed it. Opinions of the penalty (and how Bryson handled the situation) flooded in from fans, players and analysts. How would you sum up Bryson’s week? Was it a net positive or negative?

Sens: I would think it was a huge net positive in social-media followers, which is all that counts these days, right?

Melton: Positive for his YouTube channel, that’s for sure. I’m sure he’ll give us a breakdown of his thoughts on his channel. Be sure to smash that like button and hit subscribe to hear more.

Marksbury: Probably a net positive in terms of the general public and support from his fans, but if Rory McIlroy’s sentiments about the situation are any indication, it could be a possible net negative with his pro golf peers.

Let's take first things first, I caught his play on No. 5 on tape and was gasping at his aggressive movements around the ball, much like Rory's reaction.   His whole reaction was off-putting and to this observer part of larger integrity issue in our game, as the guys feel entitled to drop each of their fourteen clubs behind their balls to tamp down rough.  I'll even take the incoming to note that Scottie Scheffler is one of the bigger offenders in this regard, so I'll just leave you with that marker.

As for the threat to pull out of the tournament, don't let the door hit you on the way out, Bryson.  We've been completely OK with you in your golf cone of silence, and won't miss you at the majors either.  They feel entitled to improve their lies and then they feel entitled to act like spoiled children, entitling me to ignore them.

Rory McIlroy didn’t hold back when asked for his opinion on DeChambeau’s Friday drama, saying, “I’m not particularly fond of him. I think a lot of it’s performative. I think a lot of it’s for attention.” There’s an obvious history between these two, but was this fair from McIlroy? Or crossing the line?

Sens: Fair game for McIlroy to share his thoughts when asked for them. I think the forthrightness was refreshing. I’d quibble with Rory’s assertion that DeChambeau was holding the tournament hostage. The uncertainty around tee times was overblown, I thought. You’re playing the weekend in the Open Championship. Do you really have other plans? Go to bed early, get up early and be ready to go. A grizzly old-timer might be left to conclude that not knowing whether you’re teeing off at 11 a.m. or 11:30 a.m. is what qualifies as adversity for today’s pros.

Melton: Is it fair to call the content king Bryson “performative?” Absolutely. Everything he does is for the cameras. I don’t take any issue with his behavior being called out.

Marksbury: I do think it’s a bit ungentlemanly to publicly air your dislike for another player like that. And I don’t understand how DeChambeau’s situation delayed the release of tee times. But for Rory and Bryson, there’s some history fueling the bad blood here. As for Bryson’s “performative” antics, well, the whole situation was fairly dramatic. I’m not sure how much was driven by heat-of-the-moment passion for an alleged injustice, or Bryson’s desire to milk the moment for his personal brand. Maybe a little of both.

Talk about taking a head fake, Josh....  The point of the hostage allegation wasn't the tee times.  It's that a major player threatened the establishment with a withdrawal if they didn't rule in his favor.  Pulling that s**t was never likely to work on the R&A, but are we so confident in our other golf organizations?

And Jess is more upset by Rory's reaction than by Bryson trying to take the 154th Open hostage?  Strange priorities, girl.

But are you open to the premise that these guys are clinically insane?  Or maybe I' just over-interpreting their sense of entitlement.  Because, well, Earth to Bryson (from the Geoff' link above):

DeChambeau Wanted Trump To Join Penalty Discussion

While making his case against a two-stroke penalty for violating Rule 8.1 following Friday’s second round, Bryson DeChambeau asked rules officials to bring President Donald Trump into the chippy conversation.

Sources with knowledge of the thirty-minute discussion said DeChambeau wanted the President to join a campaign against the eventual two-stroke penalty that ultimately dropped his score from 66 to 68. The request came after DeChambeau had already been given a rare bit of special dispensation to return to the scene where he’d stomped around tall fescue rough in his backswing. (The R&A’s hard card states that “a player’s scorecard is officially returned to the Committee when the player has physically left the recording office/area.”)

After returning from the fifth hole scene in a R&A Executive Director of Governance Grant Moir, and DP World Tour referee Mark Litton, DeChambeau and the officials reconvened in the Recorders trailer. They were R&A Chief Executive Mark Darbon and Executive Director of Championships Johnnie Cole-Hamilton. During the thirty-minute session, DeChambeau had still not signed his scorecard and late finishers coming off the 18th green were not able to sign for their rounds, causing tee time processing to be delayed until nearly midnight. DeChambeau was pleading his case and wanted the President of the United States to weigh in.

The request was denied, as were DeChambeau’s pleas not to penalize him for the breach.

Did he think the R&A gave him a red card?

A couple more bits from The TC gang:

Who won the Open Championship without winning the Open Championship?

Sens: On the one hand, hometown favorite Tommy Fleetwood had to be disappointed not to make a Sunday run. But he also spoke of the memories he made, the experiences you can’t buy, and how much they meant to him. Coming from another player, a cynic might read that as a crushed soul trying to rationalize. But I get the sense that Fleetwood was being entirely sincere.

Melton: How about Casey Jarvis with his first-career major top 10? This was his first Open start, and he performed well enough to qualify for next year at St. Andrews. I’d say that’s a pretty great week.

Marksbury: Both great picks. I’ll second Tommy. The hometown hero was in the conversation throughout and birdied his last two holes on Sunday. Not a win, of course, but that had to feel pretty good.

It was a sweet week for Tommy Lad, though he may be from there, but he is certainly not of Royal Birkdale.  Seems like that little bit was underreported this week.

I think the most complicated reaction will be to Sam Burns, as I still can't get my thoughts around him.  he hung in after those three straight bogeys, but just seems to struggle on his important Sundays.  The contrast with his playing partner yesterday couldn't have been starker.

And who’s the most upset wondering what could have been leaving the final major of the season?

Josh Sens: Scottie Scheffler, the defending champ. With even a halfway decent week with the putter, he could have won by several shots.

Melton: Absolutely Scottie. He hit the ball well enough to put on a repeat performance of last year, but his putter was ice cold. Tough way to end the major season for the world No. 1.

Marksbury: Cameron Young. He bogeyed 18, then held the clubhouse lead for more than two hours, with a playoff looking imminent, before finally being crushed by the tournament’s very last putt. That makes eight career top-10s in the majors — and the pursuit of his first major continues.

Cam will be disappointed for sure, though hard to be overly upset with a 64.  He'll replay No. 18 in his mind until April for sure.

I've opined on Scottie previously, the frustration seems to erupt with great frequency these days.

That's most upset.  For most depressed I nominate your humble blogger, who will struggle with the knowledge that the next meaningful golf is nine months away.

Have a great week, but don't expect to see me, as way too much golf is on the swchedule.