Open Championship 2026: This story involving Ryan Fox, Cameron Young and the claret jug on an airplane is absolutely bonkers<\/a><\/p>\nHe noted: \u201cThe construction of the holes appeared to be good, judging from the photographs they sent me.\u201d<\/p>\n
That he never saw the course is testament to his whirlwind career in architecture where he was a huge part of changing the game in both Australia and the United States.<\/p>\n
Then, just after the Second World War, MacKenzie\u2019s Australian partner, Alex Russell made the Paraparaumu Beach links near Wellington.<\/p>\n
For the longest time, it was the country\u2019s only course ranked in the world\u2019s top 100 and unquestionably another important step towards bringing golf \u2018to life\u2019 in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
The next was Bob Charles emerging from life as an aspiring 18-year-old bank teller to winning the New Zealand Open as an amateur a few years after Paraparaumu opened for business.<\/p>\n
Charles, Peter Thomson and Kel Nagle kept professional golf in New Zealand alive in the 1960s and 1970s but Charles winning the 1963 Open Championship was another brick in the wall.<\/p>\n
\u2018Charlie-Bob\u2019 was a brilliant putter and a quiet, modest person, a characteristic exemplified by the major champions to come \u2013 Michael Campbell, Lydia Ko and now Ryan Fox.<\/p>\n
Campbell\u2019s career after he won the 2005 US Open never again reached the same heights but him beating peak-of-his-powers Tiger Woods at Pinehurst was an unforgettable day.<\/p>\n
I watched the final round in a clubhouse somewhere near Wellington and when he made the final putt, an entire roomful of people fell silent for what seemed like minutes \u2013 no cheering, no clapping. Just tears.<\/p>\n
Ko, a Korean-born immigrant continues to play her part as arguably her country\u2019s greatest player. She\u2019s been a star since winning the Canadian Open as a 15-year-old. Fifteen.<\/p>\n
Ryan Fox didn\u2019t even\u00a0play\u00a0a golf tournament until he was 18.<\/p>\n
The next important step for New Zealand golf was American billionaires Julian Robertson and Ric Kaine investing in world-class modern golf at Cape Kidnappers, Tara Iti and Te Arai.<\/p>\n
There have been millions of dollars invested in largely disappointing new courses \u2013 where golf was primarily used as a vehicle for selling houses \u2013 but the very best of them have been hugely significant and of a standard MacKenzie would have no doubt approved.<\/p>\n
In the same week the universally admired Sam Neil died Ryan Fox did something extraordinary at Royal Birkdale to both lift the spirits of his homeland and ensure he\u2019s a legend on the level of \u2018Charlie-Bob\u2019, \u2018Cambo\u2019 and Dame Lydia.<\/p>\n
Fox\u2019s equanimity over the final quartet of holes will be long remembered as he faced his moment. In the century since MacKenzie left Auckland by boat for America has any Kiwi made a better bogey than the one Fox made at the short 15th where his almost perfect tee shot finished cruelly jammed up under the back lip of a pot bunker?<\/p>\n
Then he finished it all by making what will, in time, come to be seem as one of the greatest-ever birdies to win a major championship.<\/p>\n
Maybe the best.<\/p>\n
And, with Paraparaumu Beach back as a tournament venue on the PGA Tour of Australasia and Dame Lydia signed on to welcome the return of the NZ Women\u2019s Open in March, if MacKenzie came back now, not only would he be delighted at the pace of Fox\u2019s play \u2013 and equally horrified at the pace of the tortoises \u2013 he\u2019d acknowledge golf in New Zealand is not only well and truly alive, but a century of evolution has never seen it in a better place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Photo: The Open] \u201cGolf,\u201d wrote the great golf course architect Alister MacKenzie in 1930, \u201cin New Zealand, unlike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15783,44,1779,8712,16178,2636,2143],"class_list":["post-40331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-bob-charles","tag-golf","tag-lydia-ko","tag-michael-campbell","tag-new-zealand-golf","tag-open-championship","tag-ryan-fox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}