BMW CHAMPIONSHIP

August 18, 2026

Ryan Fox

Bellerive Country Club

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. We would like to welcome the 2026 Open Championship winner Ryan Fox to the interview room here at the 2026 BMW Championship. Ryan, it's your second appearance back since winning The Open Championship. You played last week at the FedEx St. Jude. Can you just talk about getting back into it last week, and what it was like having the break after winning The Open Championship, and how felt your form was.

RYAN FOX: Yeah, I mean, the last month has been a bit crazy, to be honest. Obviously my world has changed and I'm still trying to get used to that. So it was good to get back last week. It felt like I could kind of use the golf course a little bit as my sanctuary, that I can just go back and play golf.

Unfortunately, it didn't kind of work out how I hoped. I didn't actually play as bad as the score suggested. I kind of struggled on the greens a little bit last week. Finally saw some go in on Sunday.

I probably didn't have the prep that you would normally have going in. Like, I wouldn't plan on having three weeks off in the middle of a year especially in the lead-up to the playoffs. But I felt like I had to go home to New Zealand while it was still fresh, celebrate properly. Which I'm really glad we did that.

I've not normally been one that's been great after a bit of a break. Like, I need to work my way into it. So, hopefully last week knocked some cobwebs out and some rust and I can get back into it properly this week.

THE MODERATOR: It must have felt nice to play particularly well on Sunday after having gone through all that, and having that form coming into here, which is your second start at the BMW Championship. Did it give you some comfort to shoot a better score in the final round.

RYAN FOX: Yeah, the first round I felt like I played pretty well but one hole, and just didn't get anything out of it. Was kind of the same the rest of the week. It's a tough golf course if you don't drive it in the fairway. I kind of was always around the edge of the fairway last week. I never hit it bad enough to be way off line, but it was always just like, oh, in the rough, get a bad lie, and it was hard to make pars there. It was good to make that score on Sunday, see a few putts go in.

I played the PGA here in 2018, was it? I've got good memories of this golf course. So like, yeah, to bring a little bit of form into a place that I remember fondly is pretty nice.

THE MODERATOR: That was actually your fourth start on the PGA TOUR, well in the U.S. on the PGA TOUR when you played that event. We'll take some questions.

Q. You said winning changed your life. Can you give some examples of how it did.

RYAN FOX: I mean, I'm sitting here. I haven't done a press conference for an event pretty much all year. It's just everything's busier. Coming out of the hotel this week I got stopped going to dinner like five times to sign an autograph. Like, that has never really happened. It might happen obviously on the golf course, but not just randomly at the hotel. So there's no more kind of flying under the radar.

In terms of commitments and stuff, there's been, even for these two weeks, there's been a lot more than I've probably ever had. That's obviously all good stuff to have, but it's just time management is going to be a little more important going forward. Yeah, it's just going to be something that I'm going to have to get used to.

I wouldn't mind quizzing someone like Aaron Rai who has gone through it a couple months ahead of what I've done, just to see if he's feeling the same way, basically.

Q. Fascinated on your take on what makes Scottie Scheffler next level. What stands out to you?

RYAN FOX: The most impressive thing about Scottie is the consistency. I think there's a couple things. Like, the consistency in results. Because I don't think we have seen anyone that's as consistent probably since Tiger. But the consistency of his iron shots. Like, I watched most of Sunday, and the recurring theme was he just always hits the shot that needs to be hit. Like there's some hard shots coming down the stretch there. I know he had a big lead, but he just hit it, on 11, he hit it exactly where he needed to hit it.

On 12 he did the same. Might have hit it in the rough, but he laid it up in a good place and then had an incredible up-and-down.

On 14, that's a tough hole, he hits it exactly where you need to hit it in the position that he was in. Like, there was just so much control over the golf ball that it's, like he has big belief in that respect, to be honest.

Q. The top of your bag was three clubs that were not only new to you in your driver, 3-wood, and 3-iron, but they're also protocol times, so basically you were gaining Srixon that validation by winning with them. What was the process like to getting into those clubs, because I know it started kind of really in the last month before you won.

RYAN FOX: Yeah, so I tested out the new drivers in the lead up to the Scottish. It was really, really similar head. We were using kind of a prototype head anyway in between the previous model and this one. I went to the new RKT model that was, like it was pretty much the same head, it was a pretty easy switch into that. Like, it doesn't look, it's got slightly different graphics, but it doesn't look anything different than what I was playing, so that was a really easy switch for me.

The 3-wood was, I had a 3-wood I really liked and I tend to cave the face every six months or so, I'm probably not the only one that does that. In Scotland it started to go. Like, it just got really spinny and I lost control of the 3-wood. The Srixon guy in Europe, Jason, who I used for a long time said, Hey, can we, I'll just build you up a new one. How do you like the look of this new head. And I was like, Yup, like it, and just put it straight in the bag. Again, it was a pretty easy switch over. Looked pretty similar. Performance was pretty good.

Then the 3-iron which I've kind of bent down to a 2-iron, I saw that on the truck I think someone else was testing it out for Travelers, and I grabbed it I was like, Oh, I really like the look of that, is there any way you guys can make that in a 2-iron rather than a 3. And he's like, Yeah, we'll just take some loft off it. It's hollow so, they can put some hot melt in it and get a little bit of head weight in it. I tested that at Travelers and I was like, Oh, that went really good that week.

Then obviously going into Scotland and The Open Championship, it's not a 7-wood week for those two, so I used them both, I used it for both weeks and was really happy with how it performed. So it was kind of cool to put those in play. And they were, the driver especially was pretty important that week at the Open Championship. So, yeah, happy to see how that performed.

Q. I know the heads were similar, but you did change shafts. What exactly prompted you guys to go in a different direction for shaft when you moved heads?

RYAN FOX: Yeah, probably started at Travelers. I didn't feel like I was driving it badly, but I didn't feel like I had necessarily control over it. It was like I'm aiming straight and it's going to go somewhere down there. But I like hitting a little fade, and I kind of struggled with that shot a little bit the last, or the previous month or so before Travelers. I went back to an old Ventus shaft in practice the week before the Scottish, and the numbers came out really, really good for that in practice. So, again, I took it over to Europe to test out at the Scottish. We kind of messed around a little bit on the Monday of the Scottish Open going, Okay, well here's, we can use this shaft or potentially go to slightly newer model. Ended up in the Ventus TR Black, and like the first two shots was like, Oh, damn, this feels really good. And it was in the bag from there. I drove it decent Scotland and probably didn't take advantage of that, but felt really happy with the driver. Then obviously at the week of the Open Championship I had probably the best I've driven it all year.

Q. You said your life's been crazy after. I was wondering if the craziness started on the plane ride home from The Open Championship. There was a Twitter story that kind of came out that you couldn't get the Claret Jug in the overhead, or you had two of them. I was wondering if you could tell that story yourself and what happened.

RYAN FOX: I mean, the craziness probably started at about 9 o'clock on Sunday night after my official business finished. But, yeah, I was on a like six something flight back to London, to then London to Miami to go meet my family. So I got picked up from our house at Birkdale at 4:15 in the morning, so there was literally no sleep before that. So you can imagine I probably wasn't in the best state getting to the airport.

So I turn up and I've got my backpack, Trackman, I've got golf clubs, suitcase, and then I've got the Claret Jug and then the replica in these two big like boxes, rolly boxes. So I walk in, and the first person in line in front of me is Cam Young. And I'm like, Oh, no. Like, I feel a bit guilty about this. Cam was brilliant. We chatted and everything like that.

And then so I get to the check in desk and she, I go, Can these things go on the plane? Like, they're probably a little bit too valuable to go underneath. And she's like, What are they? And I'm, Oh, they're the trophies. Like, it's the Claret Jug. And then I had to explain that it was the British Open trophy and I had won it yesterday and everything. So she's like, Yeah, no problem. She's like, Normally you would call us. I said, Well this only happened late last night, and I wasn't in really any state to call anyone about it. She's like, Okay, that's fine. So I went through security. I got a couple of questions asked on security like what are these two big boxes that don't fit in the tray properly and everything like that. And everyone was good about it.

Then, getting on the plane I felt bad, like, I'm, I never like holding people up when you get on a plane. Like, everyone just wants to get to their seat. And I'm trying to figure out how to fit these two boxes in the overhead and take up all the space. Obviously I'm not in a really good place mentally at that point either. Like, all I want to do is just go to sleep and maybe have a couple glasses of water and stuff like that. So, yeah, it was interesting. But I made it to London and made it on the flight back to Miami.

And then probably the worst about that was I had left my car in Miami, and I reckon I had had two hours sleep on the plane from London to Miami and had to drive an hour and a half back up to Jupiter. That was not a very fun drive.

THE MODERATOR: The Claret Jug, you took it all the way back to New Zealand, did a lot of different things with it. I think one of the highlights was maybe having it sit next to the Americas Cup, so two pretty old trophies there. Do you have it with you? Are you traveling with it?

RYAN FOX: Yeah, it's in the back of the BMW right now actually (laughing). So, yeah, it's been cool. Last week we had a celebratory dinner with Srixon and I was like, Well, do you want me to bring the trophy? And they're like, Of course. So we chucked it in on the table of a steakhouse and the boys put some wine in it and had a little drink out of it at dinner which was really cool to be able to do that. So it was with me last week, came straight here, so made sense. Yeah, it's cool. I'm going to do it a lot this year, to be honest, it's cool to be able to show it off. Yeah, like I figured out how it fits in an overhead compartment now at least, so it's a little bit easier to travel with.

Q. I wanted to ask you more about your trip back home. Do you go back, do you have a home there that you go back to? Do you have a neighborhood where all the neighbors know you, would they have welcomed you, like, what was it like even just being in your house?

RYAN FOX: Yeah, look, we've got a house, New Zealand even though we're in Florida far more now, I still term New Zealand as home. We've got a house there and, yeah, turned up at home at like, I don't know, 9 o'clock on a Friday morning after we landed. Like, I would say half an hour after we landed I got a knock on the door and a woman from a local catering company who is one of our neighbors, lives just down the street. She had heard I had did a little interview when we landed at the airport that I wanted a pie, a meat pie, which is not something you guys have over here. But she literally comes to the door and knocks on the door and gives us a couple of bags and it was like four meat pies and a big pie, big smoked fish pie for dinner that night. And they catered one of our kids parties a year or so ago, and she's Oh, yeah, just wanted to drop these off.

There was lots of stuff like that. It was nice to be home. It was definitely busy. We got to catch up with friends and family, obviously, but there was a lot of other commitments around it. But it's such a big deal for our country. Like there's been four major champions in history now, Lydia's got a couple or three now, I think. Sir Bob Charles in 1963. Michael Campbell in 2005. Like, it doesn't happen very much to us. So, yeah, to go home while it was still fresh with while it was still in everyone's like front of mind was I think the right thing to do. Yeah, it was a cool experience for me. We had a public appearance and the middle of the city there and we had a few thousand people turn up. And I had the Claret Jug and did a little Q&A and we had a please conference at home. Which, like all of that stuff was a little bit foreign. Like, I didn't necessarily think that I -- well, I don't know if I thought I had to do it, but it seemed like more than what I expected it was going to be. But the reception was amazing. I'm glad we did it. Yeah, we certainly also celebrated pretty well. We had a couple of, we had one really good party and got to celebrate, got to have some drinks with some family as well out of it as well. So that was, it was good to go home.

Q. Did you play any golf while you were at home or did the clubs just stay packed away?

RYAN FOX: I played once with my mates. Then my coach is based in New Zealand still, so we, I saw him I think four times when I was at home. Then played with my mates. I took the Claret Jug out to our golf course and said to the guys in the pro shop, I was like, Do you guys mind if I just leave it here? And like a bunch of the members came out and took photos with it and stuff like that. It was great to be able to do that. Definitely be able to do it again when I go home at the end of the year. But the buzz around the golf course was pretty incredible as well with it.

Q. Were your kids born in New Zealand?

RYAN FOX: Yeah they were, yeah.

Q. Hale Irwin spent his entire career living in St. Louis while he played as a professional. So I know that Hale, as a young boy, his father made him play all the sports because he wanted him to be an athlete before he settled on a sport. And it worked. Hale did something nobody will ever do, which is, as a senior year in college he won the NCAA championship medal and he was also on all-conference in football. So he was a great athlete. So whenever I followed or talked to Hale, I always thought the football player was somewhere present in that situation. Your father did the same thing with you. He made you become an athlete before he, before you wandered into golf. How much of that athletic mentality was important to you getting to where you are now and how much of that mentality was part of those last five holes at Birkdale?

RYAN FOX: Yeah, I mean, I think it wasn't necessarily I was made to be an athlete. I just, sport was our whole life in our family. My mom's dad played cricket for New Zealand. My earliest memories are of playing cricket. I played rugby since five. I watched dad play from five onwards. I never had any pressure to have to play sports or anything, I just loved it. I did every -- my mom played tennis. We were down at the local tennis club a lot. I just loved every bit of it. Golf was, in hindsight, the thing I loved the most. Probably joined the club at 13 and played socially. But if I look back on it, I enjoyed golf more at that time than I did any of the other sports, it just took me a bit more time to realize it.

I don't know if I, I mean, you can see by my golf swing it's not necessarily natural. Like I think, sorry, it's not really a traditional golf swings. I think it's influenced by the sports that I played growing up rugby and cricket. I've got probably more a rugby player's build than I do a golfer's build. I think -- I generally count myself as fairly strong, and that comes out of my golf swing a little bit.

In terms of, did I take any of that into those last five holes? I'm not really sure. Those last five holes almost felt like an out-of-body experience, to be honest. It was the only thing I was focused on doing was just trying to hit as good a shot as I could hit and trying to breathe my way through it. Obviously I was very nervous. And, yeah, I've watched it back and I look a lot more calm than I felt at the time. It just happened to be one of those things that I picked the right time to just be in the zone, for wont of a better term. I probably never got to that point playing rugby or cricket, and I've only got to that point a few times in golf, but I definitely picked a good time to do it. I'm not sure really if that answers the question. But, like I still can't explain those last six holes in my head properly. Like, I've gone through it a lot and even if I put myself in that situation again I feel very nervous about it, even though I know I've done it. It was a weird, yeah, as I said, it almost felt like an out-of-body experience during those last six holes.

Q. You mentioned your 2018 PGA Championship here. You had a good finish. Said you kind of felt comfortable with the golf course, had good memories. What about Bellerive leaves fond memories for you and leaves you confident for this week?

RYAN FOX: I do remember just walking off it and going, That was a great golf course. I played nine holes yesterday and the same thing. It's strong, you've got to control your ball really well. I thought -- obviously they have redone the greens I think since 2018, so they're I think a little bit different. My memory is a bit fuzzy on the greens. But I just remember it being one of those golf courses that you got off and you go, I enjoyed playing that. Like, it was hard, but it's fair and it rewarded good shots. So it's always nice coming back to a golf course like that. From what I saw yesterday it's exactly the same. I'm looking forward to going to see the back nine later on today as well. I remember there's some pretty cool holes on that back nine. So, yeah, it's just one of those golf course, it's in great condition as well this week. Even with all the rain didn't feel like there was a blade of grass out of place yesterday. Yeah, just a place that you walk off and just go, yeah, that's a lot of good holes, a lot of good shots you have to hit around here and yeah I'm looking forward to the week.

Q. What makes the par-3 6th here so hard, and what do you see on that hole?

RYAN FOX: The 6th? I mean, what, 215, 220 to a small green and water on the right. Like, it's just, you've got to hit a really good shot there. I think it was into the wind yesterday and I hit 4-iron and missed the green left. Even though left's the bailout, it's not a real nice up-and-down like chipping towards that water there. Yeah, you've almost got to just be brave on that hole. Just get up and trust yourself that you've got to hit a perfect shot. Because even if you miss it left with the bailout you're not guaranteed of making a par. It's just a strong hole.

I imagine a couple times we'll probably play it a little more forward than we did yesterday in the practice round, so it might be a 6-iron to a front pin or something. But you've just got to hit a really good shot. And that's a recurring theme around a lot of this golf course, I think.

THE MODERATOR: You come in here this week at number 25 in the FedExCup standings. You've never been to East Lake for the TOUR Championship. How meaningful would it be to advance to that tournament next week?

RYAN FOX: Yeah obviously that's a big goal at the start of the year to get to East Lake. I feel like I've done a decent chunk of the work. I would have liked a better week last week to take a little bit of pressure off this week. I'm still in a good place and I think the goal this week is going to be to go out and try to get myself in contention on Sunday and if I can do that, that takes care of next week pretty comfortably. If I worry about the positions and what I need to do, what position I technically need to finish in this week, I think that will probably dim my head in a little bit. So just go out and focus on trying to play good golf and then results take care of themselves.

THE MODERATOR: Well, enjoy it and we appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us.

RYAN FOX: Thanks, guys.