Golf: Ryan Fox unsure of plans for early 2022 now with delay of New Zealand home isolation

Ryan Fox is hopeful of taking part in the New Zealand Open early in 2022. Photo / Photosport

Ryan Fox thought he had seen the end of managed isolation.

The Kiwi golfer spent six weeks in MIQ across three separate stints in 2021, and the announcement that the Government is delaying the introduction of home isolation by at least a month next year due to concerns over the Omicron Covid-19 variant has created uncertainty for the 34-year-old, who heads to Abu Dhabi in the middle of January for a swing of four DP World Tour events.

"It's pretty messy now. I was pretty frustrated with the announcement," Fox told the Herald.

Due to fly out to Dubai on January 14, Fox will play the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship (Jan 20-23), the Dubai Desert Classic (Jan 27-30), the Ras al Khaimah Championship (Feb 3-6), and the Qatar Masters (Feb 10-13). He had planned to return home when the borders were due to open for Kiwis outside of Australia from February 17.

But that's all changed, and he will now go down two routes to try to secure an MIQ spot: through the lobby when that opens again in early January, and also through Sport New Zealand.

"There are some spots through Sport NZ now finally, but they're pretty strict. So, I don't know if will be able to get a spot through there or not, but I'll certainly try. I am going to have to go to the Middle East regardless for two of our biggest events of the year in Abu Dhabi and Dubai," Fox said.

"For the sake of trying to keep the job for next year and I can't afford to miss those."

Fox had already applied through Golf NZ for one of the 20 monthly Sport NZ quarantine spots, anticipating there would be a chance the quarantine situation would change.

"I wanted to be safe in that sense, in case there was a reaction like there was yesterday, that I at least had something in place in case something changed.

"I had already started the process with New Zealand Golf, gone through all the forms I need to fill out.

"That's a pretty tough time of year to be trying to organise anything - most people are off work or going to be off work for a couple of weeks. Hopefully, I can get lucky with one of those spots."

Fox does have options if he is stranded overseas in mid-February, but it could see him miss the New Zealand Open, due to be held at Millbrook in Arrowtown from March 31 to April 3 next year.

"I could play a few more events overseas. It's not ideal and that puts the New Zealand Open in jeopardy for me. I've also got my charity event down at Waihi Beach in early March as well, which the timing was looking great for that before the announcement, so I'm hoping to get home mid to late February to be able to do all of that, but who knows at this point," Fox lamented.

"Hopefully, it's not a sign of how the rest of 2022 is going to go and it's just a little blip on the radar and everything opens up again towards the middle of next year. But I'm sort of not hopeful with the track record of what's been going on with us, so it looks like it might be another frustrating year for me."