When Ryan Fox rolled in a 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole at Royal Birkdale to win the British Open by one shot, it was just past 5.30 a.m. in his homeland and the sun hadn’t yet risen.
Most New Zealanders woke Monday to a wintry morning and the news their small nation had its fourth major golf champion. Those who followed Fox on television throughout the night were able to watch him lift the Claret Jug before heading bleary-eyed but happily to work. Sir Bob Charles, who was New Zealand’s first major winner and the first left-handed player to win a major when he won the British Open in 1963, is now 90 and watched Fox’s found round in replay at a more congenial hour.
“I´m watching this in color. In my day, it was all black and white,” Charles told the New Zealand Herald newspaper of the TV coverage. “I´m watching every hole that he´s playing. In my day, they only had about the last three or four holes.” Charles praised Fox for the pace at which he plays the game which goes against a modern tendency toward slow play. Fox hesitated for barely 30 seconds over the final putt that allowed him to join Charles, Michael Campbell and Lydia Ko as a major-winner from New Zealand. “Ryan is a refreshing player,” Charles told the Herald. “He plays the way the game should be played, the way it used to be played and should be played. And that is: you get on with it, and you don´t spend half an hour lining up every putt.