ST. LOUIS – Ryan Fox’s world changed last month when he drained a 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to win the 154th British Open at Royal Birkdale.
“I'm still trying to get used to that,” the 39-year-old New Zealand native said during a press conference Tuesday ahead of the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club.
Asked to give an example of how becoming the Champion Golfer of the Year has been life-changing, he said, “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.”
Fox recounted how when he showed up at the airport the morning after his triumph to fly to Miami, where he makes his home during the PGA Tour season, Cameron Young, who he pipped by a stroke with his dead-eyed stroke at the last, was standing in line behind him. And, yes, he’s gotten the hang of getting the iconic Claret Jug into the overhead compartment on an airplane. Asked if he was traveling with the silver jug this week, Fox said, “Yeah, it's in the back of the BMW right now, actually.”
More: Ryan Fox didn't waste time hitting shots or drinking wine from the Claret Jug at The Open
The Jug has been making quite the rounds with Fox. Last week in Memphis, he enjoyed a celebratory dinner with members of the Srixon tour staff, his longtime equipment sponsor. “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.”
In the aftermath of his victory, just his third on the PGA Tour, Fox took it home to New Zealand to celebrate in style. Joining Lydia Ko, Bob Charles and Michael Campbell as just the fourth Kiwi to win a major, his victory and subsequent return home was a big deal. He landed in Auckland at 9 o’clock in the morning on a Friday and during an interview he said his first order of business was to get a steak, bacon, jam and cheese pie from Rollers Bakery. It has since been re-named The Foxy and due to the frenzy for them, the bakery didn’t have enough in stock to open up on Saturday. “For those who love stats, we sold 3,700 pies in the 13 days we were open, 1,225 of them being Foxy pies,” the bakery wrote on its Instagram account.
Fox didn’t have to go to great efforts to enjoy more pies. Within a half hour of getting home, he got a knock on the door.
“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 goes, ‘Yeah, just wanted to drop these off.’ ”
Fox managed to squeeze in a round of golf with his mates, dropping the Claret Jug off at the pro shop while they played.
“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.”
Adam Schupak is a senior writer for Golfweek, covering the PGA Tour.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Meat-pie mania and life after the British Open for winner Ryan Fox