Golf: Ryan Fox’s bid to confirm 2025 PGA Tour card gets under way at Sanderson Farms Championship

Ryan Fox (right) played alongside Rory McIlroy in the opening rounds of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth last month. Photo / Getty Images

The goal is simple for Ryan Fox over the next few weeks.

In his rookie season as a member of the PGA Tour, the Kiwi had a mixed campaign and finished the regular season outside of the top 100 in the FedEx Cup standings.

The top 125 in the standings secure a Tour card for the following season, but with the Northern Hemisphere’s autumn series counting towards that, Fox has returned to the United States, looking to lock his card up over the next month.

Coming into this weekend’s Sanderson Farms Championship in Jackson, Mississippi, at 109 in the standings, there’s a good chance his spot on next year’s Tour is all but locked in.

Now, he’s looking to add the finishing touches.

“The biggest thing is just guaranteeing keeping my card. I think I’m very close to it now as it is; if I was a betting man, I’d say I’m almost safe, but I’m certainly not going to bet my career on it,” Fox told the Herald.

Ryan Fox (right) played alongside Rory McIlroy in the opening rounds of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth last month. Photo / Getty Images

“Just a couple of solid weeks in the next three or four weeks would lock up my card for next year. To be honest, there’s not a whole lot of difference between finishing 85 and 115 on the FedEx Cup now. The biggest thing is just making sure I finish inside the top 125, so I’ve given myself hopefully four weeks to do it in.

“The game feels like it’s starting to trend a little bit as well. There was some slightly positive stuff in Europe and hopefully I can take that into this week.”

Fox will play the next three weeks in the US, before heading to Japan for the Zozo Championship after getting entry into the limited-field event. He won’t be the only Kiwi in the field this week, with US-based Tim Wilkinson also competing.

Fox comes into his latest US run after a two-tournament return to Europe, finishing 61st at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in Surrey, Britain, last time out.

Since that tournament, Fox has had a cortisone injection to help deal with a niggling hip injury, which he believed he would be able to play through for the remainder of the season.

It’s something that has been lingering throughout the season, so he was hopeful he would be able to lock his Tour card up over the next month and allow himself a bit more time for recovery.

“It’s far more a Band-Aid than a cure but for me, it was a little bit of a diagnostic thing to see if the hip was a bit of soft tissue that was going on; the cortisone would work a lot better on the soft tissue than if it was something a bit more structural or bone-related,” Fox said of the injection.

“So far, so good. It seems to feel like it’s quite a bit freer and moving a little bit better. It’s been pretty good in practice and it should get better and better over the next couple of weeks.

“I’m still going to have to actually have an action plan going forward to try to get it fixed rather than, you can’t just keep putting injections in it. They lose their effect over time if you have too many of them and you certainly don’t want to get into the habit of having to have them to keep playing.”

Tee times for rounds one and two

Ryan Fox: 5.50am Friday and 1.05am Saturday – playing alongside Robby Shelton (USA) and Mac Meissner (USA)

Tim Wilkinson: 2.11am Friday and 6.56am Saturday – playing alongside Brandon Wu (USA) and Andrew Novak (USA)

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