Ryan Fox won The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in July after making a birdie on his final hole to beat Cam Young to the claret jug by one shot.
Fox reached a whole new level of fame after his Open Championship victory and he now has an entirely different standing in the game.
The New Zealander is inside the top 30 in the FedEx Cup points list and is ranked 24th in the world.
Ryan Fox has been a man in demand with numerous media outlets since his Royal Birkdale triumph.
Fox almost retired from playing professional golf early on in his career, but he carried on battling and can now call himself an Open champion.
The 39-year-old got the better of Cam Young last month at Birkdale, and the way that he played the final few holes proved that he has what it takes to win more majors in the future if he manages to get himself in contention.
Ryan Fox reveals what happened when he met Cam Young after his Open win
Young was unlucky not to find himself in a playoff after his exceptional final round at The Open.
It was only a sensational birdie from Fox on the 18th hole at Birkdale that stopped Young from having a chance.
The 29-year-old American would have been extremely frustrated to end up in second place at The Open.
The morning after Fox’s win, he bumped into Young at the airport in Liverpool ahead of a flight to London.
“I mean, the craziness probably started at about 9 o’clock on Sunday night after my official business finished,“ he explained.
“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 like, ‘Oh, they’re 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, 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.“
Ryan Fox got home eventually after his Open win
The three-time PGA Tour winner explained just how exhausting the journey back to Miami from Liverpool was.
“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,“ Fox said.
“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.“