Irish Open golf: Ryan Fox on hip injury, PGA Tour return and managing the end of 2024

Ryan Fox will be back in action at the Irish Open this week. Photo / Getty Images

When working out his golfing schedule for the remainder of 2024, Ryan Fox has had to take a few things into consideration.

First; how to best go about maintaining his PGA Tour card for 2025. After an inconsistent debut season as a fulltime member of the US tour. Fox sits 106th on the FedEx Cup standings and with the top 125 keeping their place, he is very much on the bubble with the PGA Fall tour counting towards season points.

He was hopeful one or two “half-decent” results would be enough to ensure his card for next season, but will first return to the tee boxes of the DP World Tour this week for the Irish Open after a month-long break, before trying to defend his BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth Golf Club in England next week.

Second; Fox told the Herald he has been dealing with a hip injury for most of the year which he hadn’t given much thought to, but recently learned the extent of the issue.

“I got some testing done on that when I was at home and there’s potentially some stuff I need to sort out with that at the end of the year as well,” Fox said of his injury.

“So, it’s a little bit about managing that going forward with the schedule. Once I get back to the States and if I get the job done pretty quickly, then I’ve got to figure out if I’m going back to Europe [or] if I’m coming home and getting the hip sorted; there’s a fair bit to sort out there, but I certainly can’t make it any worse than it is.

“I’ve just got to manage it; manage the workload a little bit on it, that’s about it. It’s nothing too serious, so it’s a little bit flexible at the end of the year, let’s put it that way.”

Fox played in 20 events on the PGA Tour this season, with three top 10 and four top 25 finishes. Of his 20 tournaments, he missed the cut seven times - five of those missed cuts coming in the first eight events of his campaign.

It left him with work to do in the second half of the season, and while he put some points on the board with made cuts, big results mostly alluded him; a missed cut in the Wyndham Championship last month ensuring he would be back in the States to compete on the Fall Tour to some degree.

Part of his struggles came down to his ball-striking, which he said he had a better understanding of now as he heads into a tough challenge at a links course this week in Northern Ireland.

“In hindsight looking at it going ‘okay, I can’t really do that move as well as I have been able to do it in the past’ and that explains some of the big misses I’ve had,” Fox said.

“It’s nice to know it wasn’t necessarily all my fault in that regard, so it kind of takes a bit of the pressure off. I’ve done some good work in the last week or two weeks to get the golf game back in order and find a way to play around what’s been going on with the hip.

“I got plenty of treatment as well and that’s all going well and starting to feel fine so hopefully I can take it on to the golf course and start being a little bit more consistent with that ball-striking.”

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