Fox Packs Away The ‘Gone Fishin’ Sign, Now Ready To Land An Aussie Big One

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Double PGA Tour winning Ryan Fox has packed away the Gone Fishin sign in returning from a virtual golf-free eight week break ready to reel-in one of the big ones in Australian golf.

Fox brilliantly highlighted his season winning May’s Myrtle Beach Classic and just less a month later he denied hot favourite American Sam Fox to prouldy become only the second Kiwi-born golfer after legenday Bob Charles in 1968 to win the RBC Canadian Open, and first staged in 1904,

His success in Toronto at a fourth extra play-off hole was a 19th pro career victory for the son of legendary All Blacks great, Grant Fox.

Fox’s most recent event was a T14th finish at the French Open eight weeks ago.

Now after a one of his longest breaks for some time, the 38-year-old seeks this week to join fellow New Zealanders Greg Turner (1999) and Phil Tataurangi (1996) as only a third New Zealand golfer since the inaugual Australian PGA in 1929 to cross the Tasman Sea and take home the Joe Kirkwood trophy.

Fox’s is also entered in next week’s Crown Australian Open in Melbourne.

And ahead of the pair of co-sanctioned DP World Tour and PGA of Australia events the current No. 41 spoke of life with his wife and two daughters off the course these past few months.

“We had the first month, as I said, I tried not touch the golf clubs,” he said.

“I think I maybe played like 27 holes in a month, which was really nice. I think the first round back was the first time I took the golf clubs out of the travel case and that was like three weeks in.

“I’ve got two young girls, almost five and two and a half, so I just did the normal stuff you do, taking them to kindy and creche and swims and take them to playgrounds and we’ve got a beach place up in the Bay of Islands in the north of New Zealand so we went up there and spent 10, 12 days up there over two separate periods.

“My oldest is pretty much into fishing so I basically just ended up driving the boat and trying to catch her some fish, which we were relatively successful at. It was just nice to be kind of normal and then I kind of pushed everything that I had to do golf-wise and interview-wise and everything into November (See images above with thanks RyanFoxGolf Instagram)

“So I’ve been pretty busy the last month or so doing all of those things and also working on the golf game.”

Fox is no stranger to winning in Australia having captured the first of four DP World Tour titles with success in the 2019 ISPS Handa World Super 6 Perth however as a now double PGA Tour winner he tees-up this week among the favourites.

“It’s pretty cool to come back as a two-winner on the PGA Tour and I feel very refreshed after the eight weeks off, which is, the year I had let me be able to do,” he said.

“It was a really busy PGA Tour season this past year I had some forced time off at the end of the year with a bit of a hip injury and this year was kind of the opposite. It was like, well I’ve got a chance to just take a break, go home, be dad, be normal and I’m buzzing to be back into it this week.

“It felt probably like it was a couple of weeks too much. I was watching a couple of events on TV going, ‘I’d quite like to be playing that one’, which obviously a couple of months earlier I didn’t want to see a golf club, but I’m looking forward to this week.”

Fox will contest the opening two rounds of the host Royal Queensland club course in the company with top-ranked Aussies Adam Scott and defending champ Elvis Smylie.

 



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