![\"Golfer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Getty_Images_2286871401_f895453bf4.jpg\")
Bounce Backs and Birdies on the Final 9<\/p>\nA Win for the Late Bloomers<\/p>\n
Ryan Fox started a law degree at Auckland University. Around that same time he gave up cricket and, more notably given his family history, rugby. He\u2019d gotten down to a 2-handicap before ever taking a lesson and figured he\u2019d give this whole competitive golf thing a try. <\/p>\n
\u201cLoved it,\u201d Fox told me last year. \u201cImmediately, I was like, this is it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wouldn\u2019t turn pro for another half-decade, until after his 25th birthday, and it\u2019d be another ten years before he broke into the game\u2019s highest level. That move to America, to the PGA Tour, provided priceless evidence that despite his late entry into this sport he can play it as well as anyone. <\/p>\n
Finally, at age 39, Fox is a major champion. In an age of hyper-specialization in youth sports, of can\u2019t-miss phenom, it is truly remarkable that a man who turned pro when he was older than Tom Kim is right now is the Champion Golfer of the Year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSurreal, to be honest,\u201d Fox said of his journey in the game. \u201cIt\u2019s something you dream of. I used to get up in the middle of the night to watch this tournament back home. It was always something that was there just to be able to play in it, first up, and now to be an Open champion, to be the Champion Golfer of the Year, it\u2019s unbelievable, surreal, crazy. I don\u2019t have the words in my vocabulary to explain it, to be honest.\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a reminder that golf is the ultimate meritocracy; you don\u2019t need to go to a certain school or hit a certain benchmark by a certain age to play at this level. There is no draft, no general manager you need to give you a shot. If you are good enough, you will find your way to the world stage. <\/p>\n
Bounce Backs and Birdies on the Final 9<\/p>\n
Fox played the boldest and the best of the contenders by a wide margin. It was an interesting scoring week; this was the first major championship that featured three 62s but not a single player reached 12-under for the week at any point, and come Sunday afternoon bogeys were far more common than birdies. As is so often the case, once the finish line came into view (and the wind freshened) so many drove inverse.<\/p>\n
Which underscores just how impressive Fox\u2019s finishing flourish was. He made four birdies in his last six holes, including birdie on the toughest hole at Royal Birkdale with three perfect shots. But he was just as impressive on the two holes he didn\u2019t birdie. <\/p>\n
Coming off back-to-back birds Fox stepped to the tee on 15, the rebuilt par-3 playing 240-plus yards, and tugged a long iron by the slightest of margins\u2014only to get one of those harrowing Links Golf bounces, his ball careening of the right face of the bunker and nestling up against then left lip. His only option from there was to play backwards, and the ensuing up-and-down for bogey harkened back to Jordan Spieth\u2019s miraculous bogey at this same course nine years ago. <\/p>\n
Fox bounced back with a birdie on 16 then took to the very reachable par-5 17th. He pulled a driving iron and hit a low screamer that would take advantage of cart-path fast fairways. When he made the first move toward an early tee pickup you thought he\u2019d pulled it off, only his ball kept drifting with the wind and it tumbled and hopped and finally dove into another bunker, once again finishing far-too-close to the left lip. He then, upon all that rugby strength, deep-squatted as low as he could while standing outside the bunker and somehow managed to advance it more than 100 yards. That set up a comfortable par and the platform for his heroics on 18. <\/p>\n
What struck me was how quickly he played. The crowd wasn\u2019t finished giving their respect to Sam Burns when Fox stepped up to hit the biggest putt of his life. The spectators hastily shushed themselves to clear the stage for the moment. Twenty-ish seconds after Burns tapped in for his par, Fox had won The Open. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s how he always plays, and there\u2019s no sense in deviating from your tempo at the most important moment of all.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always that way as a kid,\u201d Fox said. \u201cI see things fast\u2026for me\u2014I need to make sure this comes across right\u2014it\u2019s not that difficult to pick a shot and pick a club. I get in there and it all happens quick. It\u2019s always going to be between one or two clubs into a green, and I just see the shot quickly, pick a shot quickly, and the less time I have to think about it, the less bad stuff can creep in there.\u201d <\/p>\n
I\u2019m Standing Firm That Bryson Should Not Have Been Penalized<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve watched the video more than 20 times and I still can\u2019t believe the R&A penalized Bryson DeChambeau. The video evidence was far from conclusive and the camera angle wasn\u2019t even zoomed in\u2014this wasn\u2019t a case of, say, Patrick Reed in the Bahamas, where we had that pixelated close-up showing him clearly moving the sand behind his ball. Bryson\u2019s ball isn\u2019t even visible. The question isn\u2019t whether Bryson stepped on fescue; the question is whether that materially improved the condition of his stroke, and without clear-cut evidence surely the player\u2019s word takes precedence? That\u2019s one of the key tenets of golf\u2014players police themselves. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s also zero chance Bryson was trying to pull a fast one. No professional is more keenly aware of camera angles than the Golfluencer Extraordinaire. He\u2019s playing in a major championship besides the world No. 1. It\u2019d take some kind of sociopath to cheat live in 4K. <\/p>\n
This, of course, is merely one man\u2019s opinion. A quick peruse of social media found public opinion divided. Rory McIlroy thought it was a clear-cut penalty but Xander Schauffele didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tough one,\u201d Schauffele said. \u201cWho knows. I have no idea, to be honest. I\u2019m assuming you talk to Bryson\u2014I haven\u2019t spoken to him or heard what he said, but he\u2019s just stepping in how you\u2019d normally step in to hit a golf shot. I think the R&A said something along the lines of whether it\u2019s intentional or not, it\u2019s a penalty. It\u2019s a tough spot to be, obviously, when yo\u2019ure in high brush, kind of having to dance around to get your golf ball is a tricky thing. It\u2019s not something we\u2019re used to doing that often. You imagine you give him the benefit of the doubt. He said he didn\u2019t do it intentionally, and it\u2019s unfortunate that he got penalized because he was playing incredibly well.\u201d <\/p>\n
That it wasn\u2019t by any means clear-cut tells you all you need to know. In golf, ties should go to the player. It\u2019s always been that way. <\/p>\n
His Reaction Is a Different Story<\/p>\n
That said, how a person reacts in a moment of crisis like that one, when your cortisol spikes and all the blood rushes to your head, reveals a lot about character. That Bryson\u2019s first inclination was to throw a fit, threaten not to play the final round then play this strange cat-and-mouse game with the assembled media\u2026it turned the whole ordeal into a circus. You almost got the sense he was enjoying the performance aspect of it all. Rory McIlroy didn\u2019t hold back. <\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t pretend to be up here and defend Bryson. I\u2019m not particularly fond of him. I think a lot of it\u2019s performative. I think a lot of it\u2019s for attention. <\/p>\n
\u201cTo hold the tournament hostage like that, and to have all of us, players, volunteers, everyone waiting on him to depart\u2014I didn\u2019t feel like it was a great look.\u201d<\/p>\n
It brought to mind another unjust penalty from a few weeks ago: the red card handed to Folarin Balogun in the U.S. men\u2019s national team\u2019s round-of-16 game against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Balogun didn\u2019t throw his hands up in the air or post memes. He accepted something he didn\u2019t agree with, conducted himself like a professional and moved on. <\/p>\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Getty_Images_2286550649_e5be2446ad.jpg\")
An Unnecessary Circus<\/p>\n
One more on the Bryson saga. I\u2019m not a big fan of how the R&A handled things, and their slow action allowed the situation to have an outsized effect on the tournament. Why wasn\u2019t there any discussion of a potential penalty until after the round? When the USGA kept Dustin Johnson in limbo at Oakmont the anti-establishment pitchforks came out. And the whole delayed-tee times thing on Saturday afternoon, which multiple players took issue with\u2014that was a direct result of the delayed handing out of the penalty, compounded by them waiting on one player to either follow through on a childish threat or not? Surely the better course of action would be to release tee times as normal, and in the small chance Bryson actually did withdraw, simply deal with it as they deal with the mid-tournament WDs that happen every tournament? It\u2019d suck for the guy who has to play solo in contention on Sunday, but Bryson was never actually not going to play. <\/p>\n
Xander Keeps the Streak Going<\/p>\n
That was an all-time quiet major week for Xander Schauffele\u2014but he did manage to squeak out a T18 finish, which means he has now finished T18 or better in 18 of the last 19 major championships. The outlier, for those concerned: a T28 at the 2025 PGA Championship. <\/p>\n
A T18 won\u2019t get the juices flowing for a two-time major winner but Xander to top 20 in a major remains the best bet in our sport. He came into this week off a T51 out of 72 players at the Travelers and a missed cut at the Scottish and yet here we are. <\/p>\n
Birkdale on Bronzer<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been watching too much Love Island UK, so bear with me, but the color differences between the baked-out fairways\/rough at Royal Birkdale and the very-green putting surfaces reminded me of the ladies on the show who lather their faces in so much bronzer that they become a completely different color than the rest of their bodies. <\/p>\n
We Need a Ceasefire in Broadcast Chirping <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not every day you have the in-the-booth network commentator firing back at social media critics in the middle of a weekend major broadcast. But Kisner\u2019s not your every-day broadcaster. He\u2019s comfortable in the mud. He doesn\u2019t take shit. <\/p>\n
The first tweet that set him off came Saturday from No Laying Up, OGs of Golf Twitter and frequent broadcast criticizers. They called Kisner\u2019s bringing up the walking official\u2019s role in the Bryson saga \u201cbizarre,\u201d which prompted Kisner to highlight NLU\u2019s lack of PGA Tour starts. Kisner was in a similar mood Sunday, firing back at Kyler Porter of Normal Sport. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to lob grenades at a broadcast (and those talking on it) from the comforts of home, where you have unlimited time to polish off a witty tweet that dunks on a bunch of people doing their best live on-air. It\u2019s complaining for the sake of complaining. It results in a pile-on that doesn\u2019t actually solve anything, which is social media at its worst. It\u2019s tired.<\/p>\n
Our DOG of the Week is Billy Foster<\/p>\n
Our DOG of the week is a legend of the caddying game. We\u2019ve had Foster on Dan on Golf before\u2014it\u2019s one of my favorite interviews we\u2019ve ever done\u2014and he\u2019s had a front row seat to golfing greatness through his stints caddying for Seve Ballesteros, Thomas Bjorn, Darren Clarke, Lee Westwood and most recently, Matthew Southgate. <\/p>\n
Foster, who\u2019s as Leeds as they come, first caddied in The Open Championship in 1984, at the age of 21, for a South African named Hugh Baiocchi. He\u2019s missed The Open just once, in 2012, when he suffered a torn ACL but still attended the tournament at Royal Lytham because he simply adores this tournament. Foster once said that he\u2019d trade all 45 of the wins he\u2019s been on the bag for to work for the winner of the Claret Jug. <\/p>\n
He was in danger of not getting the opportunity to even try this year after he and Matt Fitzpatrick parted ways last year. He\u2019s been working for Lee Westwood on LIV Golf but Westwood was not in the field this week. Enter Southgate, a 30-year-old Englishman who got through Final Qualifying for the sixth time and gave Billy a call. Southgate made the cut this week and bounced back from a 76 on Saturday with a very-tidy 66 to close the week out, giving Foster yet another one of those cherished walks up the last at The Open. Here\u2019s to many more. <\/p>\n
![\"GettyImages-2220124224.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Getty_Images_2220124224_a6ef15283f.jpg\")
Sam Burns\u2019 Time Will Come <\/p>\n
Sam Burns couldn\u2019t figure out the majors for quite a while. He failed to post a single finish better than T20 in his first 16 tries, a curiously barren run for a Ryder Cup-caliber player. But the cool thing about golfing careers is that they often span decades, and there\u2019s plenty of time to turn the narrative around and Burns has done exactly that. His first true chance at a major ended in a puddle at Oakmont but he has kept knocking on the door, missing a playoff at Shinnecock by a centimeter and contending all week at Royal Birkdale before his game deserted him on Sunday. After birdieing the 2nd hole he failed to make another one the entire round and slowly bled out to a 72. His time will come. <\/p>\n
No More \u2018British Open\u2019 Please (Do We Have to Say This?)<\/p>\n
At this point, calling it the British Open borders on disrespectful. It\u2019s also counterfactual, as the Open literally last year was held outside the island of Great Britain, and with an Open coming soon to Portmarnock in Dublin you can\u2019t even use the excuse that it\u2019s always played in the United Kingdom, which the vast majority of Americans wrongly use interchangeably with Britain. <\/p>\n
The Open is the oldest golf tournament in existence. It deserves reverence, and the least we Americans can do is call it by its true name. <\/p>\n
An Unfortunate \u2018First Time Since…\u2019 <\/p>\n
That wraps an entire major season without Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson. It\u2019s the first time since 1989 that neither teed it up in any of the big 4 and it\u2019s not due to anything that happened on the actual golf course. Taking a step back, it\u2019s truly bizarre that both legends have derailed the latter stages of their careers with so many self-inflicted wounds. <\/p>\n
Lucas Herbert the Meme <\/p>\n
![\"Male](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Getty_Images_2286533975_aa6cb460ae.jpg\")
It\u2019s Darker Than Ever in the Spieth Universe. <\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Getty_Images_2271065538_61e87cec1a.jpg\")
My 2026 Major Season Grades<\/p>\n