Ryan Fox matches major championship record with a 62 in the British Open

SOUTHPORT, England (AP) — Ryan Fox added his name Saturday to the growing list of players who share the major championship scoring record when he became the third player this week with a record-tying 62 in the British Open at Royal Birkdale.

Fox started early with barely a trace of wind, and he took advantage. He made five birdies on the front nine, and birdied two of his last three holes for 62 on the par-70 Birkdale links. Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns each had 62 some 20 minutes apart on Friday.

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Ryan Fox of New Zealand looks at his putt on the 18th green during the third day of the British Open Golf championships at Royal Birkdale golf club, in Southport, England, Saturday, July 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Xander Schauffele of the United States, left, and Ryan Fox of New Zealand shake hands after complete their third rounds on the 18th green during the third day of the British Open Golf championships at Royal Birkdale golf club, in Southport, England, Saturday, July 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Ryan Fox of New Zealand acknowledges the crowd on the 188th green after completing his third round during the third day of the British Open Golf championships at Royal Birkdale golf club, in Southport, England, Saturday, July 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Ryan Fox of New Zealand plays from the rough on the 13th hole during the third day of the British Open Golf championships at Royal Birkdale golf club, in Southport, England, Saturday, July 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Ryan Fox of New Zealand putts on the 10th green during the third day of the British Open Golf championships at Royal Birkdale golf club, in Southport, England, Saturday, July 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Ryan Fox of New Zealand plays a shot from the 11th fairway during the third day of the British Open Golf championships at Royal Birkdale golf club, in Southport, England, Saturday, July 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

There now have been eight rounds of 62 in major championship history, half of them at Royal Birkdale. Branden Grace was the first to set the record with a 62 at Royal Birkdale in 2017.

Fox was in a pot bunker off the fairway on the 18th and still managed to find the green, leaving a birdie putt of nearly 50 feet for a 61. He left it short by about 5 feet and holed the par putt.

“When I got to 6 under through 14 I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got a chance.’ I would have liked to give myself a birdie chance at the last, but happy to make par,” Fox said.

He played alongside Xander Schauffele, the only player with 62 twice in a major. Schauffele and Rickie Fowler each shot 62 in the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club — like Herbert and Burns, they were playing two groups apart — and Schauffele and Shane Lowry each shot 62 in the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla.

Haeran Ryu set the record in women’s majors last week with a 60 in the final round of the Evian Championship, which has yielded all the top scores in LPGA majors since it was designated one 13 years ago.

Schauffele is the only player with 62 in a major to win. Fox, who made the cut with one shot to spared, finished atop the leaderboard with Herbert, who was still more than an hour away from teeing off in the third round.

The links have rarely been this brown and fast, but it’s the wind — or lack of it — that has allowed for such low scoring this week.

Fox, one of the strongest players in golf with his rugby heritage, leaned on his driver for much of the round and set up good scoring chances.

“The game plan was to be aggressive,” Fox said. “I was aggressive on a lot of good wedge shots. Pretty happy with 62 at the end.”

All but one of his nine birdies — Fox made his lone bogey on the 13th with a drive into a pot bunker — came from about 10 feet or closer. His drive on the 321-yard fifth hole was about 30 feet from the hole, and his most important shot was a wedge from the rough on the par-5 17th that rolled out to about 4 feet.

Herbert also had a bogey on his card during his 62 on Friday.

There have been weeks of soft conditions or little wind — two elements that lead to low scores — at previous majors. Seven major courses — three of them links courses — have yielded two rounds of 63 or lower in the same championship.

Royal Birkdale is the first to give up three of them — with half of the field Saturday and the final round still to come.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States and Iran exchanged strikes aimed at infrastructure and military targets on Saturday as an Iranian negotiator said Tehran had suspended its commitments under the interim deal with the U.S. — snapping another fragile thread as the war shows no end in sight.

The battle over the Strait of Hormuz intensified in a conflict increasingly focused on control of the essential waterway that previously carried a fifth of the world’s crude oil. The widening strikes threatened civilians and services to them, while the global economy again was on alert.

The U.S. Central Command said early Saturday that its seventh straight night of strikes hit “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities.”

The U.S. has violated its commitments under the deal that was signed about a month ago and now Iran is “no longer implementing them,” Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, told state TV.

The most significant damage on Saturday occurred in Kuwait when Iran struck a water desalination plant and an oil facility, according to the Kuwait authorities and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. Both declined to provide locations.

The strikes injured several people at the oil facility and caused a fire at the desalination plant, forcing several power generation units offline. It was the second attack against a desalination plant in two days in the tiny desert nation that depends on desalination for 90% of its drinking water.

Several firefighters and a worker were injured while battling two other blazes sparked by Iranian strikes, according to the Kuwait Fire Force. Kuwait briefly closed its airspace due to missile threats, and Kuwait Airways said it was rescheduling most flights to and from the capital.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps stepped up its warning that countries hosting U.S. forces should be “prepared to receive a corresponding response,” according to Iran’s state TV.

Iraq said it shot down attack drones over the city of Irbil. Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency said the kingdom’s air defense systems had downed Iranian missiles, while air sirens sounded multiple times in Bahrain throughout the day and in Saudi Arabia in the morning, according to their governments.

Iranian officials say recent U.S. strikes have killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds in Iran. The U.S. military acknowledged that several more of its service members were injured.

Iran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic after the war started with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28. That sent the price of oil soaring and has given Iran significant leverage in negotiations. The price of oil rose Friday above $86 a barrel, close to its highest level in a month, as crossings through the strait fell to a three-week low, according to an international shipping tracker.

Before the war began, the U.S. had been in talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Trump now faces political pressure to end the war and avoid the kind of prolonged Middle East conflict he had campaigned against.

U.S. airstrikes hit an electricity and desalination plant in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, Iranian state TV reported. The attacks hit Bonji, a coastal village on the strait.

Overnight strikes damaged two tunnels and a bridge, disrupting one of the main highways toward Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port that sits near the narrowest part of the strait, according to Iran’s state-run news agency. Iran also reported strikes on strategic Qeshm Island inside the strait.

Iran acknowledged “attacks on power infrastructure” during the U.S. airstrikes for the first time Friday when its Energy Ministry issued a call for people to use less power in southern provinces “experiencing extreme heat.” It did not specify what was hit.

Iranian authorities said at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in U.S. strikes in the past three weeks, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge Friday.

U.S. officials acknowledged 13 additional U.S. service members — 10 Army soldiers and three Navy sailors — had been injured since Monday, but offered no details. Since the war began, 14 U.S. service members have been killed and 427 wounded.

Iran has said the strait must be under its sole control and that vessels should pay fees to Tehran, even though the world for decades has considered it an international waterway.

Trump has returned to threatening to target power stations and bridges to try to compel Iran to loosen its hold on the strait. The U.S. also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil.

A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping.

Ezzidin reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran; Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel; Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq; and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.