BMW PGA Championship: Ryan Fox reflects on Wentworth win that reshaped his golf career

Ryan Fox will return to action for the first time in about a month this week. Photo / AFP

Ryan Fox changed the trajectory of his career over a 15-hole stretch in 2023.

Playing in the BMW PGA Championship at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, the Kiwi golfer had made a strong start to his tournament. However, a triple bogey on the third hole of his final round left him five shots off the lead and looking like an outside shot at best of being able to overturn that deficit.

He went eight-under-par through the next 15 holes, a birdie on 18 seeing him clinch a one-shot victory at 18-under-par. A premier event on the DP World Tour, the win saw him surge up the season rankings in what had been an otherwise challenging year.

Coming off arguably the best season of his career in 2022, during which he won the Ras al Khaimah Classic in February before taking out the Dunhill Links Championship in October to finish the season inside the top 30 in the world rankings, 2023 had been a slow burn.

Reflecting on that tournament this week ahead of this year’s edition, he said the win wasn’t necessarily his breakthrough moment – but it changed everything.

“I’d obviously had a couple of wins the year before, and Dunhill Links is an iconic event out here as well. I felt like I’d won a couple of decent events, but to get this one, being a Rolex Series event, it changed the whole trajectory of my career a little bit. It locked up the PGA Tour status for ′24, everything kind of, yeah, it just set it all up,” he said.

“It’s definitely the biggest [win]. Well, Canada [this year] is pretty close, I would say, but in terms of what it did for my career, it was pretty massive winning over here. I can look back on it really, really fondly.”

Fox will play in one of the feature groups of the opening rounds, alongside Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre and England’s Tyrrell Hatton, as he returns to action for the first time since the BMW Championship in Maryland about a month ago.

Fellow Kiwis Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori will also be in the field. For Hillier, it will be another chance to stake his claim to a PGA Tour card for 2026 as one of the top 10 players on the DP World Tour who don’t already have a PGA Tour card. He currently sits at No 17 in the rankings – putting him as the 12th-best non-PGA golfer at his point in the season.

For Fox, he returns to Wentworth in a different position to where he was at this time last year, when he was battling with a hip injury and in a fight to maintain his PGA Tour card. Now, he has his injury issues under control, has bagged two wins on the PGA Tour this year and finished in the top 50 of the FedEx Cup standings. In all, he has qualified to play in whatever tournaments he wants to in 2026, giving him a lot more freedom for the remainder of 2025.

“Definitely, the stress levels were a fair bit higher last year, or at the back end of the year, than they are this year. I can really look forward to a break this year and know that I’ve locked myself up for a few years. I’ve qualified for the events that I want to play next year in the US and everything’s in a pretty good place,” he said.

“I can kind of free-wheel it this week. I’m not playing to keep any status, I’m not playing for points or anything like that. I’m playing the next couple of weeks because I want to try to win a couple of tournaments.

“In that regard, we can go out and give it a crack and if it works, great. If it doesn’t, it’s not the be-all and end-all, which is a nice place to be.”

Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.