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PLUS… Our latest issue, on sale now, is set to thrill readers with a lineup that celebrates the game, its champions and the courses that make it unforgettable.<\/p>\n
And yet all those guys play golf, and all to about the same standard, that being roughly 8-12 handicappers who plot their ball around the course in manifold ways yet write down roughly similar scores. The golf scorecard remains blessedly, absolutely egalitarian.<\/p>\n As it is in chopper land, so it is at the elite, pointy, professional end, where people move their ball to the hole in many and various ways. For every Jim Furyk, who waves at the top of his swing like a fancy man, a dandy \u2013 yoo-hoo! – there\u2019s a synchronized powerhouse like Tiger Woods, a glorious artisan like Ernie Els, a beautiful machine like Adam Scott.<\/p>\n And then there are the brutalists; those who don\u2019t so much dig the ball from the dirt as carve at it like super-fit Bobcats, like woodsmen angry at the tree, like Lance Cairns at the MCG.<\/p>\n Exhibit A: Ryan Fox. \u00a0<\/p>\n
PLUS… Ryan Fox is using his Australian PGA Championship return to plot a Presidents Cup ambush, admitting he still feels the sting of being overlooked for duties three years ago.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re at Royal Queensland and the great Scott is paired with Fox and Elvis Smylie. It\u2019s steamy here, shade\u2019s a premium, luck\u2019s a fortune and brollies are up. It\u2019s just gone 1pm and the party tent is half-pumping, the yellow-clad patrons getting their groove one, feeling it, thinking, today\u2019s gonna be a good, good day, and so.<\/p>\n From the tee on five Fox launches a bomb, a near abomination, that soars some 330 metres towards goal. He and Scott walk and talk, as they do most holes. Scott, classically proportioned; Fox with the bow-legged gait of Mongo the Magnificent, the cowboy from Blazing Saddles.<\/p>\n Not to say you could see the man shirtless, astride a rank Brahman bull from the Gulf Country, but I bet you can\u2019t un-see it now either, particularly given the slight paunch Fox sports, the one that NFL experts might call the power-gut of the offensive lineman.<\/p>\n Fox’s old man was an All Black, though a \u201cpinhead\u201d according to some, because he played flay-half or what the Kiwis call first five-eighth. Ryan is closer in build to a front-rower. He is part Bobcat.<\/p>\n Adam Scott (left) and Ryan Fox talked all day at Royal Queensland. PHOTO: Getty Images<\/p>\n He follows his drive with a strong, short-iron and a 12-footer for the bird. He is seven-under. He is right in this tournament.<\/p>\n Onto the seventh tee and I take slow-motion video of his swing. Apologies for the slight blurriness. But have a go at it. He flares his left foot and takes the club back conventionally to the top, but the move from there \u2013 well, check it out.<\/p>\n
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\n December 2025 issue: superstars light up Aussie summer
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\n Kiwi’s aim to out-Fox the Americans and break Cup hold
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