Ryan Fox won The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, holing a birdie putt at the last to finish 10 under par and beat Cameron Young by a single stroke.
The 39-year-old New Zealander hit a 9-iron from 175 yards to 11 and a half feet on the 72nd hole and made the putt, avoiding a playoff, ESPN reported. His total was 270. Young finished at 9 under.
It is his first major championship.
How the lead changed hands
Sam Burns began the day in front at 10 under, two clear. He finished third at 8 under.
The damage was done early and then quietly. Burns made consecutive bogeys at the fourth, fifth and sixth, and then failed to make a single birdie over the last 12 holes. That is a particular way to lose a major: not a collapse so much as a slow inability to make anything happen, while the players behind keep making threes.
Scottie Scheffler, Si Woo Kim and Tommy Fleetwood tied for fourth at 7 under, three off the winning score.
A week of low scoring, decided by one putt
This was a strange Open in that respect. Royal Birkdale gave up three rounds of 62 across the week, matching the lowest round ever shot at a men's major, and Fox had one of them, in the third round on Saturday.
Courses that yield scores like that usually produce a winner who runs away with it. This one instead came down to a single approach shot and a putt inside 12 feet, in the last group, with a one-shot swing deciding the championship.
The third New Zealander
Fox becomes the third man from New Zealand to win a major, joining Bob Charles, who won The Open in 1963, and Michael Campbell, who won the US Open in 2005.
That is a thin list for a country with a strong sporting record, and it reflects how small New Zealand's golfing population is next to the United States or the European golfing nations. It is also 21 years since the last one.
At 39, Fox is a reminder that first majors do not only arrive early. He has won the oldest championship in the sport at an age when most players are assumed to have had their best chances already.
