TELFER’S THOUGHTS 15.6.26

It’s often said the hardest task confronting a newcomer to the USPGA Tour is not so much winning your first tournament but successfully defending it 12 months later.

Sure, Tiger Woods made a habit of winning the same tournament year after year, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy have done the odd back-to-back wins in a row, but there can’t be too many others.

Ryan Fox came very close to joining this elite group. Standing on the 71 st hole in the Canadian Open, which he won on this same Toronto course 12 months ago, he was in second place with two holes to play. He would have to birdie the 17th and possibly eagle 18 in order to catch leader American Bud Cauley.

Not surprisingly, there was no holding back from the aggressive Kiwi, it’s how he likes to play his golf. Two safe pars on these closing holes were certainly not going to get his hands on a second Canadian title.

Unfortunately, like most things in sport, when you up the ante, you also increase the risk.

And so it turned out for Foxy. He missed the fairway off the tee on 17, a 499-yard par 4, one of the hardest holes on this Toronto course. His drive in fact finished up in a fairway bunker, 185 yards from the hole. Using his undoubted strength, Foxy moved the ball 185 yards, leaving him 25 feet from the pin where he proceeded to 3 putt. Now the gap was 5 shots between leader Cauley and the New Zealander. But, as they say, Foxy wasn’t going to die wondering.

The 18th , a 520-odd-metre or 571-yard par 5, enough to win the hole and the title, had been there for the taking for Fox this week. He made birdie there on each of the first 3 rounds. Probably in his mind was the thought of an eagle and if Cauley were to stumble on 17 and 18, who knows, he might have been able to force a play-off. He smashed out a 300-metre drive, leaving himself just under 200 metres to the hole.

Twelve months ago, in his play-off with Sam Burns, he smacked a 3 wood from 210 metres to within 10 feet of the pin on this hole, enough to set up the win, but alas history was not destined to repeat itself. Instead he came up short of the green and then saw his ball slide back into the adjacent lake and his hopes of a second Canadian Open drowned in a watery grave. He made bogey here as well, so a bogey/bogey finish for a 2 under 68 and a share of 8th place.

Yes, privately I suspect Foxy will have been kicking himself, but he shouldn’t. A safety-first attitude over those two final holes would almost certainly have guaranteed him second place. That’s just not the way Foxy approaches golf. For his efforts he nonetheless has now jumped inside the top 60 on the FedEx Cup standings and for finishing 8th he pocketed $US286,000 or close to $NZ500,000 and he goes off to the US Open, starting on Thursday, knowing he’s just put together 4 rounds under 70, a sure sign his game is in good shape which it will need to be if he wants a top 10 finish this week.

Finally, Bud Cauley, the 36-year-old American who won the Canadian Open, recorded his first win on the US Tour after 238 starts.