Ryan Fox has kept the damage to a minimum.
No one goes into a tournament aiming to finish in a tie for 50th, but it’s what that result at the St Jude Championship represents that will give Fox some confidence as the PGA Tour playoffs roll on.
Englishman Justin Rose won the tournament in a playoff against US Open champion JJ Spaun.
Rose, who lost the Masters title in a playoff against Rory McIlroy earlier in the year, finished with four birdies in his last five holes and narrowly missed a putt for the win in regulation.
Playing the 18th hole, both Rose and Spaun had birdie putts clip the lip of the hole and roll out in the first playoff hole, before both making birdies on the second.
That saw organisers cut a new hole position on the 18th green. Both players gave themselves great looks at a birdie in the third playoff hole, with only Rose able to capitalise on his to take the win. The 45-year-old became the oldest player to win on the PGA Tour since 2020.
Third-round leader Tommy Fleetwood extended his run of most top-10 finishes without a win in the modern era of the PGA Tour (since 1983) to 43; a bogey on the 17th left him needing a birdie on 18. Instead, he finished with a par, leaving Rose and Spaun to contest the title.
Fleetwood is now without a win on the PGA Tour in 162 starts, with six runner-up finishes, and now six third-placed finishes.
After a slow start to the week, Fox finished with back-to-back under-par rounds, finishing one-under in his fourth round on Monday morning to sit at even par for the tournament.
That result limited how far he fell in the FedEx Cup standings, now projected to drop just two places to 34th.
That position is more than good enough to earn him a spot in this week’s BMW Championship in Maryland, with only the top 50 in the standings making the cut for that tournament.
With only the top 30 moving into the Tour Championship the week after, Fox was always going to have work to do if he was to compete in the final event of the year, and falling too far at the St Jude Championship would have made things that much harder.
Fox made a strong start to his final round in Memphis, sitting two-under through nine following seven pars and back-to-back birdies on the par-five third and par-three fourth.
A double bogey on the par-four 12th set him back to even for the round, before he added another two birdies. He did, however, finish with a bogey on 18, costing him a shot and a couple of places on the leaderboard.
Across the weekend, Fox struggled for accuracy off the tee. Through four rounds, he found just 20 of 56 fairways off the tee – a strike rate of just 35.71%, which was the lowest of the 69-man field. He wasn’t lacking distance off the tee however, being among the top five in driving distance.
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.