Ryan Fox on His Final Round Mindset in Winning the 2026 Open Championship

Ryan Fox was two missed cuts away from getting a normal job. He is now the Open champion, and he flew the Claret Jug home in the overhead bin.

Fox joined Rich fresh off a full day of media, still holding the actual trophy, and immediately got a lesson request. Rich wanted it up close. Fox obliged, turning it so the little golfer on the front faced forward, because he "got told multiple times on Sunday" that is the rule. The names run all the way up the jug, engraved small. He picked one out at random. Harry Vardon.

Then he pointed to his own.

"I don't know if I'm ever going to get used to reading that," Fox said.

The jug came apart quickly on Sunday night, in the best way. Fox and his group poured "multiple bottles of red wine" through it, starting with a 2015 French red off the wine list at Birkdale, and he still does not know who paid for the rest. "Am I going to get a bill for it in like a couple of months? I don't care at this point."

He keeps the replica for life and the real one until he returns it to St Andrews next year. Getting it there is his problem. He was handed two wheeled carry cases and, in his telling, not much else. Both went in the overhead bin on Monday morning, because checking it was never an option. "You don't want to be that guy that checks the Claret Jug and loses it," he said. "It wouldn't be great press if an airline loses the Claret Jug." The gate agent, who had no idea what was in the boxes, agreed once she found out.

The origin story is the part that lands hardest. Fox grew up on rugby and cricket, in a family that produced an All Black father and a grandfather who played cricket for New Zealand. He was a two handicap at 16 or 17 and nothing more. Golf only became serious once he started a law degree, decided law was not for him, and needed something competitive to do.

He turned pro at 25. He was a DP World Tour rookie around 30. He did not become a PGA Tour rookie until 37. "I'm definitely outside of the mold now," he said. "But I'm sitting here with the Claret Jug behind at 39. I wouldn't trade my career for the world right now."

The near-quit came in year two on the Aussie tour, when his dad flew over to caddie and asked him a simple question. Why do you play golf? "I said, well, it's supposed to be fun. But it was the opposite of fun at that time." His dad told him to go have some fun and see what happened. Fox finished fifth, kept his card, and never looked back. "I was two events away from quitting pretty much."

Rich wanted to talk about the two holes nobody else is talking about. On 15, Fox found a bunker lie he read as dead before he even reached it, because the on-course commentators were studying it too intently. He hit out backwards, made bogey, and called it "probably the best bogey I'll ever make in my life."

On 18, he had already done the work before Burns finished. Deep breaths, one read, one stroke.

"It wasn't a hard read. It was the execution was the hard bit."