Strong showing brings opportunities for Fox
AUCKLAND: Ryan Fox needs a good schedule planner after acquiring special temporary membership on the PGA Tour following another strong showing at a major.
After a month away from tournament golf due to pneumonia and a trip home for the birth of daughter Margot, Fox finished in a share of 23rd at the PGA Championship on Monday, 12 shots behind winner Brooks Koepka.
Fox, playing his first tournament since finishing in a tie for 26th at the Masters, had four birdies and five bogeys on the final day to earn $US165,000 ($NZ262,000).
He did enough to secure the special temporary membership which grants him unlimited entries for the rest of the PGA Tour season, pending an invitation.
Fox had 12 tournament starts to earn enough points for the temporary membership but did it in just seven events, having missed just one cut;,while also withdrawing from the RBC Heritage due to pneumonia.
He can now secure full status on the PGA
Tour for the
2024 season if he earns as many, or more, nonmember
FedEx Cup points as the
125thplaced player in the final 202223
FedEx Cup standings and Eligibility Points List.
It means his schedule for the rest of 2023 needs some working out.
“It’s going to be an interesting rest of the year schedulewise. I might end up playing a bit more over here than in Europe,” Fox told Newstalk ZB’s Jason Pine.
“That was the goal and it kind of complicates the schedule a little bit, but it’s, you know, nice to tick it off relatively early. I’ve still got a fair bit of work to do to try to get a card out on the PGA tour for next year.”
Fox is heading to Texas this morning for the Charles Schwab Challenge starting on Friday. He plans to play The Memorial the following week in Ohio, one of the
PGA Tour’s ‘‘elevated events’’, before returning home for a week for some family time.
Then it is the US Open at the Los Angeles Country Club in the middle of next month.
From there the schedule gets a bit flexible as the goal for Fox is to earn a full PGA Tour card next season.
The Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Connecticut, the week after the US Open, is also an elevated event and carries a purse of $US20 million.
Then the following week the options are to stay in the US and play the likes of the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit and the John Deere Classic in nearby Silvis where strong showings would help earn a PGA Tour card for next year.
Or the probable option is to head to the DP World Tour’s British Masters, where he finished eighth last year, and start building on his season in Europe where a top10 finish on the season standings — he is 33rd at the moment — also earns a PGA Tour card for next year.
Book him in for the Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club on
July 1316, a week out from the British Open at Royal Liverpool GC, which will be Fox’s seventh attempt to lift the Claret Jug.
The BMW Championship at Wentworth in September is a lock while being around France in midSeptember for the French Open while a certain rugby tournament is being played might be appealing.
He has already secured a twoyear card for the DP World Tour, following his victory at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship last October which he would probably want to defend.
‘‘All of those events in Europe are fantastic events and ones I want to play and have played well in, in the past,” Fox said.
“We’ll figure out what happens over the next few days. It’s a bit of a different problem than I expected to have this year. I was almost kind of looking forward to taking some time off when you have No 2 arriving and could spend some time at home and all of a sudden, I’ve got all these opportunities over here and lots of events to play and everything’s kind of changed up.’’ —