Kiwi golfer Ryan Fox joins Martin Devlin on It’s Only Sport ahead of the third men’s golf major of the year – the US Open at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina. Fox comes off a brilliant performance at the Canadian Open, where he finished in a tie for seventh at 10 under par, but was in the lead by as many as four strokes at one stage during the third round. He’s finished 38th tied and 75th in the first two majors of 2024 (The Masters and the PGA Championship).
Fox talks to Devlin about his form of late, the Pinehurst course and the challenges it presents, how hot it’s expected to get during the tournament, and more.
Listen to the full interview with Martin Devlin & Ryan Fox at https://theplatform.kiwi/
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Ryan Pinehurst number two North Carolina have you played this baby before I played a long time ago when I was an Amer um just after the redo and I remember it being very hard then and um unless my memory was correct it’s going to be pretty tough this week after playing nine holes today gry Meer has said that he loves it he it’s one of the most beautiful best courses ever yeah I can see that it is spectacular it’s um it’s got a cool feel about it it’s through the Pines it’s got you know all the sort of uh Native grasses around as runoffs it’s just off the fairways it’s very penal if you miss it and then you know it’s got some great visuals around the greens you know basically all the greens have big runoffs and deep bunkers and um yeah test every part of your game and it’s yeah it’s definitely one of the best golf courses in the world so once again it’s going to be a Precision player tournament isn’t it you got to hit every shot perfect yeah yeah the one thing for a US Open it’s probably relatively wide off the teen comparison to some other courses so um it does give you a little bit of room off the tea but it takes it away very quickly um around the greens you know the greens are quite big but they play very very small because if you miss your targets it runs off and it runs a long way off the greens and um yeah you can end up in some pretty horrible spots after hitting a relatively good shot and you know adjust off the fairways even though they are wide um you know the native grasses I’ve got there uh there’s a lot of luck involved you could hit it in there and get extremely lucky and have a shot or you could hit it in there and be literally struggle to chip it out sideways and um you know it’s as I said it tests every part of your game and um it’s going to get firm and fast by the end of this week and I expect most of us to get beaten up amate golfers Revenge may they they can make you look really like a real clown kind it the best golfers in the world all of a sudden you can shoot three over triple Bogies and quadruple Bogies yeah look I remember watching in 2014 here and um you when Martin kimer won and that’s all it was I think guys were struggling to make birdies um it was just a grind the whole week and um we had a lot of rain last night which softened the golf course so we might get away with it for the first couple of days but I expect come Saturday Sunday this place is going to be really fiery and um you know a good score is going to be even par what kind of temperature you know weatherwise are you are you are you playing in short sleeves obviously yeah yeah it’s um it’s in the 30 between 25 and 35 for the rest of the week I think so we yeah the weekend’s going to be quite hot I think I heard it’s going to get to sort of 95 is Fahrenheit which I think is close enough to 35 degrees um which is you know that’s a little that’s a little nasty today was great today was sort of mid 20s and sunny and not a lot of breeze so um yeah I think it’s just going to get hotter and hotter throughout the week and which makes the golf course get firmer and firmer throughout the week Ryan Fox we’re headed the US Open kicking off on Friday New Zealand time of course okay you played nine today was that 1 through nine or was it 10 through 18 I played the back nine today so um it’s sort of practice rounds take a while out there I think I played the back nine in three hours you just got to hit so many shots around the greens just to kind of figure out where the best place to miss it is and you’re going to miss a lot of greens this week so it’s going to be one of those weeks where I’m just going to play sort of 999 and try to stay relatively fresh if you play 18 out there um you know being out on the golf course for six hours and grinding is is a pretty long time with all the other stuff you have to do so it’s kind of nice just to play nine a day and keep energy levels up so a dumb question for you sorry but when you get to practice like that um do you actually have to play a proper round or are you allowed to go okay I’m going to take seven different shots at this particular shot uh no it’s more it’s definitely the latter um okay and you I’ve probably become more guilty of it over here because practice rounds are so slow and that’s what guys do so inste so instead of having to wait all the time in a practice round you just go well I’m going to hit a few more chips and a few more putts around the greens and see how it all goes um in Europe I was generally a more if I play with someone let’s play a match and actually you know play properly to an extent but that’s also having played a lot of a lot of the courses multiple times and you know not really having to figure anything out about how to play them um so yeah over here it’s definitely a little bit different in that respect it’s a hit a lot of shots around the greens and hit a few shots into the greens and stuff it’s yeah taking a little bit more to figure out new golf courses Ryan what have you learned about yourself this year just in terms of the emotional the mental side of it because you know you’ve had big UPS big ups and downs uh you’ve actually got to play the weekend at both Majors which was excellent your foran and at the Canadian open was superb and and then the real lows in that so trying to balance all of that out without even adding in you know obviously the family the travel and when we spoke last time just the different environment that the states is in what are you learning um I mean it’s probably nothing new in that respect I’ve been through a bunch of it before but you know the probably learned that the golf game is never as far away as you think it is at times this year I thought it was Miles Away um and it’s turned around really quickly um and you as I said I’ve been through that stuff before but you kind of you know I’ve had such a good couple of years it’s really easy to forget about the tough times and you know I’ve had a few of those tough times this year and you know I probably didn’t handle them as well as I could have and you again going forward I’ve just got to remember that it’s you know it’s not as far away as you think it is it’s not all as grim and as Bleak and you know yeah there’s there’s not you don’t need to sweat the small stuff as much that you know I am a good golfer it’s in there somewhere and it’s not going to disappear for a whole year it I will find it eventually and thankfully I found it sooner rather than later in the last you know those last sort of six to eight weeks I’ve started to play a lot better which is nice and and so just how how you are as a person when you come home at night how much does how much does that alter things or are you able to completely divorce what goes on on the course from when you get home like I because I’m just asking this question from a normal human perspective if we have a bad day at work all of us arrive home a little grumpy no yeah look it’s definitely been hard to do that um look I’ve got the kids on the road so in one respect it’s easy but in another respect it’s I feel like I don’t get any downtime you know trying to get them to bed and um you know do all the packing and traveling and stuff like that so you know if you’re a little bit down on the golf course and a bit stressed out about things you know the off course stuff was quite stressful as well um so in that respect it kind of added to it a little bit but I definitely prefer it that way than the other way where you know if you’re in a hotel room by yourself you’ve kind of got nothing else to think about but Golf and that you know that can definitely do your head in pretty quickly yeah cuz you said last time that you felt a bit lonely sometimes on tour and stuff like that and look I just I me I’m more stunned and I think people will will be as as well as that a guy like you can have doubts God you’ve had so much success you’re such a brilliant player you know you’ve earned a shitload of money doing it you get ranked really well in the world you’re playing the majors even you can have doubts yeah look I I think that’s natural as a human to be honest um I think it’s natural in sport um you know you you go through the ups and downs and you know I guarantee all of the best sports people have gone through patches where you know they didn’t believe they were good enough and or things weren’t going quite right and it it’s tough and you know I think in sport in general it’s so Cutthroat and the margins are so small it’s really easy to get that way too you know you might not be doing a lot wrong but at the top at the top level of sport everyone is so good and and it’s hard to compete if you’re a little bit off and that I think that can affect you e
1 Comment
Go Foxy!