Telfer's Thoughts

In 2025 Rory McIlroy has done it, so has Scottie Scheffler and Seb Straka, the only golfers to win twice this calendar year on the USPGA Tour. Ah… but hold on, we can now add a third name to that list - a bloke called Ryan Fox, who showed his win in the Myrtle Beach Championship a month ago was no fluke.

Helped, in no small way, by what Foxy himself called “the best shot I’ve ever played”, he won the Canadian Open in a two-way play-off with Sam Burns, an American. But gee, it was one helluva struggle. Burns and Fox needed four extra holes before they could be separated, thanks finally to a birdie four on the par 5 18 th at the Osprey North course in Toronto.

By my reckoning Foxy has become the first New Zealander to win two tournaments on American soil in a single PGA year. Bob Charles won a USPGA title in 1963 and then added the British 0pen title later in that year.

Winning two titles within the space of a month makes him, alongside Rory and Scottie, just about the hottest golfing property on the planet at the moment.

If there is one incontrovertible fact about golfing life it’s that victories, no matter the strength of the field, don’t come easy.

Fox and Burns battled it out for 22 holes each today and in the course of the four holes play-off it was clear the pressure was needling away at both of them. Both had chances which they couldn’t cash in on and both had anxious moments which threatened to end their hopes of victory, but each was able to drag themselves back into the dogfight and finally it was a beautiful high climbing Fox 3 wood from 250 yards which landed and stopped just a few feet from the hole that eventually

snapped the deadlock and handed this enormously prestigious title to the Kiwi.

The Canadian Open, with a history dating back over 100 years, may not be a Major but it carries enormous prestige and always attracts one of the strongest fields outside of the four Majors. This year’s field was headed by Rory McIlroy no less.

Winning it brings a long list of benefits. Just like his win last month saw him into the year’s second Major, the USPGA, so this win gets Foxy into this week’s US Open at Oakmont. He picks up US$1.7million or around three and half million NZ dollars in prizemoney for his Canadian win.

His world ranking has shot up to 32 and his FedEx ranking now has him inside the top 30, virtually assuring him a place in golf’s richest tournament, the FedEx finals, later in the year. Invitations to compete in rich end-of-season events will flood in. Sponsors’ doors will open wide.

Back here he should, if I can be unashamedly partisan, win the Halberg Sportsman of the Year and probably the Supreme Halberg title as well.

This is not just a memorable day for NZ Golf but NZ sport as well.

So, for sure we now have a fox on the run and he’s running as fast as his legs can take him to his next big goal - to capture a Major Championship title. He has shown very clearly he now has the game, the mind and the nous to win at the highest level of this sport.