{"id":231762,"date":"2025-07-02T10:31:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T10:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/231762\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T10:31:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T10:31:17","slug":"ryan-fox-reflects-on-pga-tour-rise-and-overcoming-mental-hurdles-on-way-to-two-titles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/231762\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Fox reflects on PGA Tour rise and overcoming mental hurdles on way to two titles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing what a couple of good weeks can do. [I\u2019m] still trying to work out, achieving a dream \u2013 winning on the PGA Tour once<\/a>, let alone twice<\/a> in that period \u2013 I think it\u2019s going to take a little while for that to really sink in.<\/p>\n

\"RyanRyan Fox won the RBC Canadian Open in early June. It was his second PGA Tour win in three weeks. Photo \/ AFP<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s certainly been nice to just be able to chill out, have a bit of family time and look back and just have a little bit of a \u2018wow, what the hell\u2019s going on?\u2019 basically.\u201d<\/p>\n

While in such situations it can be hard to pinpoint the exact moment when things started to trend in the right direction, Fox can also identify that moment to the exact shot.<\/p>\n

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\n

After feeling like his best golf wasn\u2019t too far away, despite some wildly mixed form, Fox had his Kiwi coach Marcus Wheelhouse join him in Texas<\/a> for the C.J. Cup Byron Nelson in early May.<\/p>\n

The pair worked on a couple of things and Fox got into a good place with his swing. While he finished that tournament in a tie for 60th, he carried that good feeling over into the Myrtle Beach Classic.<\/p>\n

It was there that things clicked into place for the Kiwi and he was able to overcome the mental hurdles that had previously come with being in contention.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the back nine at Myrtle Beach<\/a> that it started to feel really good. I don\u2019t really know how to describe it, but I\u2019d gone from being nervous about being in contention and just maybe not feeling quite comfortable, to something kind of clicked in my head,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

Discover more<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I had a shot into 13 in that final round of Myrtle Beach; I hit a really good shot, and a shot that I didn\u2019t feel overly comfortable hitting, and everything just kind of calmed down. It went from everything racing to all of a sudden, \u2018hey, I\u2019ve got a chance to win this tournament, it\u2019s time to sack up\u2019 basically.<\/p>\n

\"RyanRyan Fox chipped in to win the Myrtle Beach Classic in a playoff. Photo \/ AFP<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything felt a bit more comfortable coming down those last few holes, then obviously getting over the line and getting the win, it just took the pressure off going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a similar situation when he won the Canadian Open two weeks later, where his thought process was \u2018I\u2019m trying to win a tournament\u2019 and not \u2018I\u2019m trying to hang on to a place and score FedEx Cup points.\u2019<\/p>\n

As for the mental hurdles he faced, Fox said he always welcomed getting butterflies but it was that sudden change in mindset that saw him earn his breakout wins \u2013 both of which came in playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe butterflies are a good thing. That means it means something, and I\u2019ve always been pretty good at not worrying about them. You just acknowledge they\u2019re there and you\u2019re like, \u2018Okay, they\u2019re good, you want them. It means that you\u2019re excited and you really want to be in that situation.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what I struggled with is I\u2019d had a big miss in terms of a golf shot for a while. Like, I could just randomly stand there and blow one way off the planet with a driver or miss a green by miles with a 7 iron and not quite know where that came from. All of a sudden down the stretch, those thoughts disappeared.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI started playing like, pursuit golf, if that makes sense. I was trying to win a golf tournament. I was trying to hit a good shot, not standing there worried about where I could potentially hit it, and that was a nice place to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as that happened, that back nine at Myrtle, I basically played the next two months like that. I wasn\u2019t worried about a bad shot. I wasn\u2019t worried about the outcome. I wasn\u2019t worried about anything else. I was just trying to hit a really good shot and deal with whatever happened after that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re in that headspace, it\u2019s amazing how many good shots you hit and how fewer bad ones you tend to hit.\u201d <\/p>\n

Christopher Reive<\/b><\/a> joined the <\/b>Herald<\/b> sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s amazing what a couple of good weeks can do. [I\u2019m] still trying to work out, achieving a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4106],"tags":[5176,16762,61836,17341,9382,2826,91005,1429,32505,254,49079,58017,10524,50094,29345,23362,79,91006,6093,15973,12451,16,15,13690,91007],"class_list":{"0":"post-231762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-and","9":"tag-changed","10":"tag-course","11":"tag-eight","12":"tag-fox","13":"tag-golf","14":"tag-hurdles","15":"tag-life","16":"tag-mental","17":"tag-on","18":"tag-over","19":"tag-overcoming","20":"tag-pga","21":"tag-reflects","22":"tag-rise","23":"tag-ryan","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-titles","26":"tag-to","27":"tag-tour","28":"tag-two","29":"tag-uk","30":"tag-united-kingdom","31":"tag-way","32":"tag-weeks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114783183463655479","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}