Ryan Fox birdies the 18th hole to win The Open 2026 by 1 shot over Cameron Young

Adam Schupak, GolfweekSun, July 19, 2026 at 5:40 PM UTC

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SOUTHPORT, England – On Saturday night, Ryan Fox enjoyed a celebratory meal with his caddie, coach and manager after shooting 62, equaling the lowest score in men’s major championship history.  At one point, Fox shifted into a reflective mood and told his team that if he’d been given his career since turning pro at age 18, he’d have taken it and run. That’s when Team Fox delivered an important message: Let’s dream about winning the 154th Open Championship. This could really happen.

On Sunday, Fox, a 39-year-old New Zealand native, surpassed his wildest expectations, holing an 11-foot birdie putt on the final hole to shoot 2-under 68 and win The Open by one shot over Cameron Young.

Fox made four birdies on his final six holes to finish with a 72-hole total of 10-under 270 and claim the Claret Jug and title of Champion Golfer of the Year. What would he do for his career now?

“I probably would have killed people for it,” he said with a smile.

Fox comes from impressive athletic stock. His grandfather played cricket for New Zealand in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. His dad, Grant, played rugby for the All Blacks and was a key player when they won the 1987 World Cup.

Growing up in Auckland as the son of one of the greatest rugby players his country has ever produced, Fox learned an important lesson: hard work beats talent. He switched his focus to golf at age 25. It was a slow rise through the Australian Tour, and he conceded that during his second season he considered quitting. He had three events left in the season and in danger of losing his card but at the Australian Masters at Royal Melbourne his dad caddied for him and asked a simple question: “He said to me, ‘Why do you play this game?’ And I said, ‘Well, it's supposed to be fun.’ But it wasn't really very fun at the time,” he recalled. “He goes, ‘Well, let's just go out this week and try to have some fun.’ I think I finished fifth that week, and that made enough to keep my card for the year.”

Fox plays quickly but his journey to Champion Golfer of the Year seemingly took forever. He made the DP World Tour at age 30, notching four wins, including the BMW PGA Championship, its preeminent title, and finally made the PGA Tour at age 37. "He's always been good enough," said his caddie, Dean Smith. "He just had to believe."

Fox called winning on the PGA Tour, which he had done first in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and a month later at the RBC Canadian Open, “a different beast.” It was validation that his hard work was paying off.

“If you work hard to be the best you can be, you can live with whatever happens,” Fox said. “But if you don't do the work, there will always be that little thing in your head, the what if; what if I had done this differently or done this better. That's what Dad drilled into me as a kid.”

Brilliant sunshine, the start of a streak of good weather rarely associated with the Open Championship, graced England’s largest and most dramatic sand dunes all week long, turning the turf brown and bouncy and the greens as hard as concrete.

In his first round at Birkdale, Fox couldn't find his rhythm and had to overcome an untidy 2-over 72 start, T-85, which marks the lowest position on the leaderboard after the first round for an eventual winner at The Open. He bounced back with 68 on Friday but only made the cut with a stroke to spare. Then he went out early in benign conditions and shot the third score of 62 of the week, tying the course record and vaulting into the final group, just two strokes behind Sam Burns, who he had beaten a year earlier in a playoff to win in Canada. Walking down the second fairway, Fox asked a marshal walking with his group, “Is it always this quiet on a Sunday?”

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Perhaps it had something to do with the action happening up ahead as the cream started to rise to the top. Young, who had already won the Players Championship in March and began the day seven strokes off the pace, started acting like Steph Curry, said NBC’s Terry Gannon, pouring in five straight threes. Young made a bogey at the last when he gambled off the tee with driver and drove into a pot bunker. Believing he needed a par, he tried to hit an open-faced 6-iron from 186 yards but struck the revetted face of the bunker, his ball ricocheting sideways into the rough and he did well to salvage bogey. “I felt like I had a chance to get the second one on the green,” explained Young, who also finished runner-up at the Open in 2022. “It just felt worth the risk.”

His final-round 64 stood up as the clubhouse lead for more than 2 hours but he admitted that he wasn't too optimistic that he'd done enough. World No. 1 and defending champion Scottie Scheffler birdied 16 and 17 to get to 8 under but bogeyed the last to shoot 67 and finish T-4. Burns made three bogeys in a row beginning at No. 4 and pars the rest of the way to shoot 72 and finish third. That was the same score that Bryson DeChambeau signed for to finish T-14. At the turn, South Korea’s Si Woo Kim held the lead but he made four bogeys on the inward nine to shoot 72 and finish T-6. Even England’s own Tommy Fleetwood had his moment where it seemed like he was destined to win that elusive first major not far from where he grew up. He rolled in a 73-foot birdie putt at the first and stood 8 under after 8 but the birdies dried up until the last and he settled for a T-4 finish.

Even Fox appeared to be fading from the picture when he dropped a shot at the 11th to fall back to 7 under. With just two top-10 finishes this season, there was little reason to expect him to rise to the occasion. He had never had a top-15 in 29 appearances in the majors but Fox always loved links golf. He’d won the Dunhill Cup at St. Andrews and he wasn’t about to give up on his dream now. He bounced back with birdies at Nos. 13 and 14 to move into a tie with Young. And then he got a bad break at the par-3 15th hole that could’ve doomed him. Wayne “Radar” Riley for Sky Sports and Thomas Levet with France’s Canal Plus were the roving reporters following his group and Fox noticed them look at the bunker and walk past and figured he had a shot to rescue par. But a look of concern stretched across his face as they doubled back and began to rehearse the shot themselves.

“I'm like, oh, this is no good,” he said. “When I got there, it was probably worse than I thought it was or thought it was going to be.”

Fox had no choice but to hack out backwards and then managed to get up-and-down for a hard-earned bogey.

"That kept me in it," he said. He birdied 16 to tie Young once more but missed a golden opportunity from 10 feet for birdie at 17.

The 18th had relinquished only 27 birdies all week. Fox had worked for two decades for this chance to win a major and he pushed all his chips into the center of the table at 18, telling his caddie he'd live with the consequences if “he stuffed it up.” He thrashed a 331-yard drive into the fairway and wasted little time choosing to cut a 9-iron from 175 yards, the wind off the left.

“I hit it exactly how I wanted to," he said, then begged it to "Please be good." Indeed, it was.

Fox led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting that week but he’d never faced an 11-foot putt to win the biggest championship of his life. With his hands shaking, Fox took just 22 seconds to hit his putt, which dove into the left side corner, making him the third Kiwi to win a men's major, joining Bob Charles, the 1963 Open champion, and Michael Campbell, the 2005 U.S. Open winner. [Lydia Ko has won multiple majors on the women’s side.] "We punch above our weight," the Kiwi said. His 62-68 weekend score was a stroke off the lowest closing 36-hole score of any major and tied the mark at the Open, and he had the largest comeback by position after 36 holes (T-52) to win a men's major all-time. He also became just the fourth first-time major champion at age 39 or older in the last 30 years. He said he couldn't wait to drink red wine from the Claret Jug, filling it in record time, and to bring it to his family in Florida.

"I spoke to my kids last night, and they said, 'Bring back a trophy.' I think this is a pretty cool one to bring back for them," Fox said.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Ryan Fox birdies the 18th hole to win The Open 2026 by 1 shot

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