SOUTHPORT, England -- New Zealand's Ryan Fox hit the iron shot and putt of his life on the 72nd hole Sunday to win the 154th Open Championship for the first major championship title of his career.
Needing a birdie on the 18th hole to avoid a playoff with clubhouse leader Cameron Young, Fox hit his approach shot from 175 yards. As the ball flew in the blue English sky toward the green, Fox yelled, "Be right!"
It was.
The ball stopped 11½ feet from the hole. After his playing partner, Sam Burns, putted out for par, Fox drained the birdie putt to win the Claret Jug. He raised both arms into the air after the ball fell into the cup.
"I hit two shots exactly how I wanted to hit them," Fox said. "I didn't feel anything for the putt; everything was shaking that much. I was just happy to hit it somewhat near the hole, and to see it go in was incredible.
"To cap it off with a putt -- everyone practices on the green, I guess, you've got a putt to win a major championship, to win The Open. It's not like that in real life. It's not a very comfortable feeling. It's certainly very enjoyable when you see it go in."
It was just the 27th birdie all week on No. 18 -- the fewest of any hole at Royal Birkdale this week as it played 0.0346 strokes over par for the tournament, the hardest of any hole this week.
Fox, who matched the lowest round ever in a major championship with a 62 on Saturday, put himself in position to win with three birdies in a four-hole stretch on the back nine en route to a 2-under 68. His 10-under total of 270 was one stroke better than Young's.
Fox narrowly missed a 10-foot putt for birdie on the par-5 17th that would have put him in front before the finishing hole.
After that putt, Fox turned to his caddie, Dean Smith, and said, "You know, we're going to have to give it a go."
"I'm never going to talk him out of it," Smith said. "If he made that putt [on 17], it could have been a completely different story. You might have hit 4-iron off the tee, and that probably would have left us with a 5- or 6-iron in. But he felt good. He had a chance to win a major championship and The Open, and he took it on."
Fox smacked a 330-yard drive down the left side of the 18th fairway. The remaining 175 yards was a perfect number, according to Smith.
"We had a 9-iron and we knew he could pretty much hit it as hard as you wanted," Smith said. "If it's really good, it should come up [5 yards] short of the flag and take everything out."
Fox, who plays with perhaps the fastest pace of play on the PGA Tour, didn't wait long -- on his approach or the final putt.
"I was always that way as a kid," Fox said. "I see things fast. I was the same when I was playing cricket growing up. I played almost every sport growing up, and tennis I wanted to hit the ball hard, and cricket I wanted to hit the ball hard. Everything just happened fast. I was never methodical at anything, to be honest, and it just carried over into golf."
Fox, 39, entered Round 1 at odds of 170-1 to win the Open Championship, according to DK Sports. He is the third male golfer from New Zealand to win a major championship, joining Bob Charles (1963 Open Championship) and Michael Campbell (2005 U.S. Open).
Burns, who started the final round with a two-stroke lead, made three consecutive bogeys on the front nine to fall back of the leaders. He left a 32½-foot birdie putt short on the par-5 17th that would have tied Fox and Young going into the 18th.
Burns finished third at 8 under.
Young, who was also trying to win his first major, watched more than two hours of action from the clubhouse after carding a 6-under 64 in the final round to put plenty of pressure on the other contenders.
"I thought 10 [under] had a decent chance," Young said. "I've played around the lead in majors enough to know that scraping out even par on a Sunday in a major championship can be really difficult. So you figure those guys at the top, somebody's probably going to make a run, but I was just close enough where I felt like maybe the lead could stay the same."
Young caught then-leader Si Woo Kim at 10 under with his seventh birdie of the round on the par-5 17th. But then things quickly unraveled for Young on the 18th. His 319-yard drive ended up in a deep fairway bunker.
"It was a really hard tee shot," Young said. "Driver is aggressive there, but the only option to take out all the bunkers is to leave yourself like 265 [yards] in, which didn't feel that smart to me either. I just figured go ahead and try to hit a good one. Off the face, I really thought I did. I hit a nice shot. It's just windy."
Young might have gotten too aggressive on his next shot and his approach hit the lip of the bunker, bounding off to the right.
"I felt like I had a chance to get the second one on the green," Young said. "I kind of had a wide open 6-iron. It was only 160-something yards to the front. So I felt like there was an off chance I could get something on the front edge. I wasn't trying to miss it thin but I did. I was very grateful it got out of the bunker."
Then Young's third shot rolled back into a greenside bunker. Young nearly chipped in from 33 feet. A bogey dropped him to 9 under after 72 holes.
Burns, who posted a 62 on Friday, picked up a birdie on No. 2 to become the first golfer to get to 11 under. But then things quickly unraveled for him.
On the par-3 fourth, Burns' tee shot was short of the green. He mishit his pitch shot and missed a 14½-foot putt for par. On the short par-4 fifth, Burns' wedge shot went over the green. He chipped past the hole and two-putted for another bogey.
Then, on the par-4 sixth, Burns hit his tee shot into a creek down the left side of the fairway. After taking a one-stroke penalty and dropping, Burns' approach was short. He nearly chipped his fourth shot in the hole but settled for his third straight bogey, dropping him to 8 under.
Kim, who was trying to become the first Asian-born golfer to win the Claret Jug, had the lead when he made the turn at 10 under. But Kim was undone by back-to-back bogeys on Nos. 11 and 12 and another one on the 16th.
Kim tied for sixth at 6 under.
World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler, who struggled with his putting for much of the week, finally got things going in the final round. He picked up birdies on three of his first five holes and another one on the 12th to get to 8 under.
After Scheffler made bogeys on the 13th and 15th holes, he made back-to-back birdies on Nos. 16 and 17, draining 11-foot putts on both holes, to get back to 8 under.
Needing a birdie on the difficult 18th to tie Young for the clubhouse lead, Scheffler hit his 306-yard drive into the native grass. His approach shot stopped 12 yards short of the green. Scheffler tried to run a putt up the hill, but it didn't have a chance. He ended up making a bogey to drop to 7 under.
Scheffler tied for fourth at 7 under with Kim and Tommy Fleetwood.
"Going into today, I had some experience in comebacks in stuff like this," Scheffler said. "I told myself if I could go out and shoot 4-under on the front nine, I'd be right in it because the leaders wouldn't have barely teed off yet, and that would have put me at 8, and the leader would have been at 10. I was 3 under, made the birdie there at 12, and I think that got me to 8, and at that time the lead was 11. So I'm thinking to myself, 'Let's get a few more out of this and see what happens.'"
Fleetwood, who grew up in Southport and was trying to become the first English-born golfer to win the Claret Jug since 1992, picked up three early birdies to get to 8 under after eight holes. But three straight bogeys from there knocked him out of contention.
Bryson DeChambeau, whose controversial two-stroke penalty after the second round became the biggest story of The Open, started the final round four strokes behind Burns. He was even through eight holes but then made a bogey on the ninth and a triple bogey on the 11th.
