After a breakthrough year in 2022, Beachlands’ professional golfer Ryan Fox is on track to have one of the most successful seasons of his career.
This year, across the 17 tournaments that he’s played in, the world number 27-ranked golfer has racked up over $5.1 million in prizemoney.
The bulk of that sum has come in the last two months after Fox recorded a third placing, a second and, of course, a win at the BMW PGA Championship.
“I think the game has been close all year, just some familiarity with the tour, the courses, having the family travel again all helped with this last stretch,” Fox told the Times.
An impressive showing at the BMW PGA Championship event in September saw Fox claim his fourth victory on the DP World Tour and take home the biggest pay-day of his career, winning US$1.53m ($2.59m).
The win at the Wentworth Golf Club in Surrey, UK, was the last thing on his mind after starting his final round with a triple-bogey and going up against Europe’s best golfers.
“Winning at Wentworth was a highlight not just of the last few weeks but of my career in general
“It’s such an iconic event for us and all the best in Europe were playing that week so to come out on top was a real buzz,” Fox says.
In a video circulated on social media after Fox’s special win, he is seen surrounded by his family as his emotions took over.
Fox could be heard turning to his wife Anneke saying, “Do you like that leaderboard?”
He’d just beaten Europe’s best golfers including Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Adam Scott, Tommy Fleetwood, Viktor Hovland and Tyrrell Hatton.
“At that point I was just trying to figure out what had just happened,” says Fox.
“It kind of hit me standing there for the presentation that I would have got enough ranking points to be in the top 50 at the end of the year to get into the Masters, and that I’d just taken on a bunch of the world’s best players down the stretch and got one over there.”
Speaking to the Times in January, Fox said his goals for 2023 were to win another event, pick up his PGA Tour card and stay inside the top 50 golfers in the world.
Now as the season nears completion, Fox says 2023 has been a “pretty good” year for achieving his goals.
“The goal now is to just get the top card from the DP World Tour (from players not otherwise exempt) as there is some good stuff to come out of that for next year,” he says.
