The 18th at Royal Birkdale gave up 27 birdies all week. Ryan Fox needed one of them, and he got it at the last possible moment.
The final hole
Standing on the tee tied with Cameron Young, the New Zealander hit a nine-iron from 175 yards to 11 and a half feet, then holed the putt. It gave him a closing round of 68, a total of 10 under par, and the Open Championship by a single stroke. Young finished on nine under.
Sam Burns, who had led after 54 holes, fell away to third at eight under. Scottie Scheffler and Tommy Fleetwood shared fourth on seven under.
A par at the last would have meant a playoff. Fox did not need one.
The round that made it possible
The win was set up a day earlier. Fox shot a third-round 62, matching the lowest round ever recorded in a major championship.
Scoring that low in a major is rare enough; converting it into a title is rarer. By NBC Sports' account, Fox is only the second player to shoot 62 in a major and go on to win it, after Xander Schauffele at the 2024 PGA Championship.
First major, third New Zealander
At 39, Fox has been a professional for well over a decade without a major to his name. That changed at Birkdale.
He becomes the third male golfer from New Zealand to win one, following Bob Charles, who won the Open in 1963, and Michael Campbell, the 2005 US Open champion. Charles remains the only left-hander to have won the Open.
The purse
The championship carried a record purse of $17.75 million, according to PGA Tour figures. Fox earned $3.2 million for the win; Young took $1.842 million as runner-up.
Those numbers say something about where the men's professional game has arrived. The gap between winning and finishing second at a major is now larger than most players earn in a season.
For Fox, though, the number that mattered was the one on the scorecard at the 18th, where a week of low scoring came down to a single putt on the hardest hole on the course.
