Is there something in the water at Myrtle Beach’s Dunes Golf & Beach Club – well, besides the occasional alligator, that is?
After this past week’s Open Championship, where New Zealand’s Ryan Fox outlasted everyone down the stretch at England’s Royal Birkdale Golf Club, you’d be justified in wondering. After all, for the second year in a row, a previously unheralded player has now used his inaugural PGA Tour victory at the ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic to launch a stellar run of golf.
On Open Sunday, Fox completed an astounding comeback in the year’s final major championship, capturing by far the biggest triumph of his late-starting Tour career. No one saw it coming: his 2-over par 72 start on Thursday left him tied for 85th in the Open field, and a Friday 68 moved him up only to T-52, allowing him to sneak into the weekend by a single shot.
But then the 39-year-old, only in his second year on the PGA Tour, turned his weekend into a miracle finish. Fox torched the Southport, England links with a record-tying 62 Saturday, and followed with a 68 – his 130 total tied the Open’s best-ever closing 36 holes – that saw him hoisting the Open’s Claret Jug trophy on Sunday.
We’ll get back to how he did it – how he reeled off four birdies in his last six holes, including the 11-foot winning putt at the 18th hole that lifted him past early leader Cameron Young and into the history books – shortly. First, though, a bit of Myrtle Beach lore that began in 2024 at the tournament’s debut.
That May, a heretofore unknown, Chris Gotterup, blew away the field at The Dunes Club by six shots to claim his first PGA Tour victory. That didn’t boost him into golf’s stratosphere – not right away, that is. In 2025, instead of playing the Tour’s “elevated” event in Charlotte, Gotterup was back in Myrtle Beach, where he recorded a so-so finish.
Then he took off like a rocket, winning the Genesis Scottish Open and tying for third at the Open. This year, he started with a win at the Sony Open in Hawaii, followed that three weeks later by taking the WM Phoenix Open and, earlier this month, won the John Deere Classic.
That’s five career victories, four in less than a year since his first win … in Myrtle Beach. Gotterup, who turned 27 on July 20, climbed from nowhere to No. 5 in the World Golf Rankings … starting with Myrtle Beach.
Great story, but what’s that got to do with Ryan Fox, you ask?
Last May, Fox also broke through at The Dunes to win his first Tour title. Unlike Gotterup’s romp, Fox’s sudden-death decision over Harry Higgs and Mackenzie Hughes came courtesy of a 50-yard chip-in birdie at the 18th hole that stunned his opponents … and, truth be told, him, too.
“I hadn’t had much luck in playoffs,” he said at a media event prior to this year’s tournament. “I had guys doing the opposite to me, holing out 40-foot putts a couple of times on the European Tour.
“I finally had some luck on my side. Playoffs are a funny thing: people tend to do crazy things. So it was nice to have one go my way, and that sort of kick-started my career.”
Indeed. A month after Myrtle Beach, Fox won the RBC Canadian Open, again in a playoff, with a birdie set up by a brilliant approach shot. His victim (you might want to remember this name): Sam Burns.
So: on to Royal Birkdale, where after his record-tying 62, Fox began Sunday’s final round two shots off the lead and in the final pairing with … Burns, the 54-hole leader at 10-under. Burns, alas, bogeyed three straight holes early and finished in third place.
Up ahead, the drama was unfolding. Cameron Young, who started hours ahead of the leaders, shot 6-under 64 for a 9-under total. Then he strolled to the practice area to hit balls and watch as chaos ensued.
South Korea’s Si Woo Kim grabbed the lead at 10-under but gave it away with four bogeys on the back nine. Tommy Fleetwood, a local favorite, got to 8-under but never any better and tied for fourth.
Fox, meanwhile, bogeyed the 11th hole to slip to 7-under and appeared to be just a spectator. After all, he’d only had two top-10 tournament finishes this year, and his best-ever major was a tie for 16th at the 2019 Open. In three majors this year, he missed the cut (Masters) and finbished T-35 (PGA Championship) and T-23 (U.S. Open).
But this week would be different. Fox birdied Nos. 13 and 14 to tie Young at 9-under. Then at the par-3 15th, he wound up in a deep, steep-faced Birkdale bunker. “When I got there,” he told reporters, “it was worse than I thought it was going to be.” He was forced to blast out backwards and took bogey, but it could’ve been worse.
Fox then birdied 16 to regain a share of the lead, but a missed 10-foot putt at the 17th left him there. At the practice area, Young began preparing for a likely playoff, since only 27 players all week had birdied the 18th hole, a long, narrow par-4 with nasty bunkers bordering the fairway. Much of the field had cautiously hit short of those bunkers off the tee.
Not Fox. His risky, booming drive rolled past trouble, and his approach from 175 yards – “I hit it exactly how I wanted to,” he said afterward – stopped 11 feet from the hole. No hesitation now: Fox took 22 seconds to stroke the putt, and punched the air with both fists when the winning birdie dropped.
Did it feel like the putt he drained to beat Burns in Canada? How about his stunning chip to take home the 2025 ONEflight trophy? This week, Fox was riding a wave of confidence that began last May at The Dunes Club; “standing on the 10th tee last year in the final round, I thought, ‘I’ve got a chance to win here,’” he said. “(It was) ‘time to give it a go.’”
The result is still being felt, he said. “That was pretty special to get that job done and become a PGA Tour winner. That was always my dream, and maybe that made it a hard thing for me; I built up winning to be a massive thing. To get it done … it took pressure off the rest of my game. I realized I didn’t have to be perfect, or better than I thought.”
Aiken native Kevin Kisner, working the Open as an analyst for NBC Sports, offered this: “I just loved the way (Fox) handled adversity. I think it’s a great lesson to all those aspiring Tour players.
“He had two great shots at 15 and 17 that ended up in poor places (but) he didn’t whine about it, he didn’t let his head go down. He prevailed because of his attitude and his perseverance through tough spots that he put himself in.”
Ryan Fox, the third New Zealander to win a major – the first since another relative unknown, Michael Campbell at the 1999 U.S. Open – says he learned how to win at Myrtle Beach in 2025. What’s next? We’ll see.
As for this year’s ONEflight winner, Brandt Snedeker is 46 and eyeing the PGA Tour Champions, aka the Senior Tour. This fall, he’ll captain the U.S. Presidents Cup team.
You have to like the Americans’ chances there, don’t you?