Ryan Fox Four Shots Off Pace at Tour Championship

Fox fired a four-under 66 opening round, with the highlight being an eagle at the third, when he holed out from 135 yards. Australia's Min Woo Lee fired an eight-under-par 62 to lead a star-studded field. Collin Morikawa, Chris Gotterup and Norway's Viktor Hovland are two strokes behind Lee.

World number one Scottie Scheffler was among a group trailing Lee by three, with six-time major winner Rory McIlroy six shots adrift on two-under par. Fox will go into the second round tied for ninth, alongside the likes of Tommy Fleetwood and Adam Scott. In what has been a year of firsts for the Kiwi, Fox is playing in the lucrative tournament for the first time after just making the qualifying mark.

Fox said after bogeys on the first two holes it was a relief to hit an even par on the 3rd hole. "Terrible tee shot off one and a terrible one off two as well and then I didn't hit a great tee shot off three but I hung on to the right edge of the fairway and I ended up with a pretty good number..." I was just trying to get myself a birdie putt after those first couple of holes and to see it go in just kind of settled everything down, Fox said. "The rest of the day was actually pretty solid after that so it's funny, golf just takes one shot sometimes to kind of find it and that was the one shot for me today.

While not yet official, Fox is set to make the Presidents Cup team for the first time after narrowly missing out in previous years. "That was probably the biggest goal of the year to make that team and I think the extra bit would be to qualify automatically, which I think I should be pretty safe for after this week. I gave myself a pretty good chance the last couple [of years], might have been a little bit hard done by four years ago but I'm very excited to be a part of it this year.

The Presidents Cup is a biennial global team competition between a 12-player United States and a 12-player international team that represents the rest of the world excluding Europe. Fox said getting the phone call from the captain of the 2022 Presidents Cup International Team, to say he hadn't made it was the toughest one to take. I got the call... I was in Montana playing there and you know I felt like I was still probably on the outside looking in, not being a PGA tour member, not playing much over here.

But I still felt like I had a shot, I was pretty comfortably inside the top 12 I think on the list and that probably affected how I played that week big time. And I knew in 2024 I'd given myself a good start to the campaign but my PGA season in 24' was pretty slow and I knew I wasn't getting the pick pretty early on. I hadn't played well enough and definitely didn't deserve it but glad I'm on the other side of it this year.

Fox became only the third male golfer from New Zealand to win a major when he won last month's British Open, a career elevating achievement. The famous silver trophy awarded to the winner of the Open Championship has travelled with him ever since.