Golf: Ryan Fox looking to turn good PGA Tour starts into great ones ahead of the Memorial Tournament

Ryan Fox finished T21 at the Charles Schwab Challenge last week. Photo / Getty Images

Through eight starts on the PGA Tour, Ryan Fox has established himself.

While he withdrew from one tournament with pneumonia, he has missed just one cut and finished in the top 30 in the other six events he has completed — including two top 20s. During that stretch, he ticked off a major goal for the season when he achieved special temporary membership on the PGA Tour, which allows him unlimited starts for the rest of the year rather than the 12-tournament limit he started the season on.

Now, with another pathway to earning a full-time card on the Tour open to him, Fox is hoping to turn these good starts into a great one and knows there’s a very simple concept behind achieving it.

Simple in theory, that is. Putting it into practice is a much tougher assignment.

“There’s nothing I really need to do. It’s just putting four rounds of golf together,” Fox told the Herald.

“I think a fair bit of it has been to do with the golf courses this year, just getting used to playing new golf courses week in and week out; hard golf courses. If you’re just a little bit out, you get punished.

“I’ve had some rounds where I haven’t felt like I’ve played that bad and I haven’t put a score together, and that’s just the nature of what it is out here. It’s just a tougher tour and the competition is harder.”

His next opportunity comes this week at the Memorial Tournament, with Fox teeing off tomorrow morning on a course designed by Jack Nicklaus at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Ohio; “another brute of a course” as the world No 41 puts it.

For the rest of the season, Fox can accumulate points on the PGA Tour towards earning a full membership for next season, while being one of the top 10 players on the DP World Tour who doesn’t already have a PGA Tour card would also get him there. Fox had a good start to the year on that tour before turning his attention to his American PGA road trip, and sits in 33rd overall on the DP World Tour standings, with some crossover events counting towards his points haul for both tours.

Fox’s time on the PGA Tour has been spent largely taking part in majors and elevated events, meaning the field is usually loaded with the world’s best players.

The competition has been a step up compared to who he was competing against on the DP World Tour last year. While the DP World Tour and PGA Tour are affiliated and the top PGA players do feature on the DP World Tour at times, it is not common. Fox suggested a top 10 in a DP World Tour event might be equivalent to a top 20 or 25 on the PGA Tour.

On the PGA Tour, full members are required to play a minimum of 20 events each year, so the fields are often stacked with talent.

“I feel like some of the weeks if I had played some weaker events I certainly would have had some higher finishes. But a lot of the events I’ve played, most of the top 50 have been playing every week,” Fox said.

“You’ve got to play exceptionally good to beat a lot of those guys and I haven’t quite played exceptionally good, I’ve just played solid, I suppose.”

Ryan Fox’s 2023 PGA Tour starts

Arnold Palmer Invitational: -4 / T14

The Players Championship: -5 / T27

WGC Dell Match Play: T17

Valero Texas Open: +6 / CUT

The Masters: E / T26

RBC Heritage: Withdrawn due to illness

PGA Championship: +3 / T23

Charles Schwab Challenge: -1 / T21