Royal Birkdale did not make it easy on anyone, and the player who figured it out last was the right one. Ryan Fox, a 39-year-old from New Zealand, walked off the 18th green on Sunday with the Claret Jug in his hands and a one-shot lead over Cameron Young, his total of 270 strokes the number that survived a four-day examination by the rest of the field. It was the headline the 154th Open had been waiting on, and the headline nobody quite predicted.
The compression of the leaderboard tells the real story of how this championship was won and lost. Fox's 270 sat one ahead of Young (271) and two clear of Sam Burns (272). Three shots further back, the defending champion Scottie Scheffler, the world number one, finished alongside Tommy Fleetwood, the local favourite playing a few miles from his hometown, both on 273. That is a four-man spread of three strokes between first and a tie for fourth — the kind of margin that keeps a major on a knife-edge through the entire Sunday back nine, and the kind that punishes anything less than a clean swing into the 72nd hole.
Fleetwood was the story Royal Birkdale wanted to write, and the Southport galleries willed it into being for four days. The 35-year-old from the town itself, raised on the dunes of the Lancashire coast, opened with the kind of controlled, wind-cheating golf that links championships are made of, and the crowds that packed the fairways knew exactly who they were watching. He came home alongside the man he was trying to chase down — Scheffler, who arrived as the reigning champion after his 2025 win and never quite built a Sunday charge. For Fleetwood, the wait for a first major title goes on. Sharing fourth with the best player in the world will not soften a close.
For Fox, the arithmetic of Sunday was the more interesting kind. He is 39. This is the first major championship of his career — the kind of first that rewrites how the rest of a player's resume is read. A US$3.2 million winner's cheque — roughly €2.8 million — and the trophy the Open has been handing out since the 19th century now sit on his mantelpiece. There is a particular kind of relief that comes with a first major at 39, the kind of number that turns a talented player into a major champion in every almanac from now on.
What Royal Birkdale also produced was a reminder of how unforgiving the oldest championship can be when it wants to be. Rory McIlroy, the Northern Irishman whose name has been on the first page of every Open conversation for more than a decade, finished in a tie for 40th on 279, well off the pace and out of the picture long before the back nine on Sunday. The two German entrants — Tim Wiedemeyer, a 21-year-old amateur, and the 22-year-old Tiger Christensen — both missed the cut after two rounds, the weekend that links golf's biggest stages closed before they could see it. The Open does not flatter pretenders; it just keeps its own ledger.
What comes next is a less tidy question. Fox's victory does not slot neatly into any of the storylines the modern men's game has been telling itself — there is no American coronation, no LIV-versus-PGA subtext, no prodigy confirmation. It is a 39-year-old New Zealander with a Claret Jug, and a four-day total that held up when the field was coming at him. The next time the Open stops somewhere, the favourite lists will look different, and the man they will have to beat is the one who just won on the dunes of Southport. The Claret Jug has a long memory; from here, it will start keeping one of Ryan Fox.
Sources
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- sueddeutsche.de original
- faz.net original
- sky.de original
- sport.sky.de original