Golf: New Zealand’s Ryan Fox transfers lessons from All Blacks to golf

SINGAPORE – New Zealand golfer Ryan Fox did not have a typical childhood growing up.

The son of All Black fly-half Grant Fox, who played in their 1987 World Cup win and was a selector for their 2011 and 2015 victories, grew up in the company of some of the world’s best rugby players and learnt from them.

He played both rugby and cricket – his grandfather Merv Wallace was a New Zealand cricketer – in school and, while he has gone on to forge his own path as a golfer, Fox’s early encounters played a pivotal role in shaping his sporting career.

The 36-year-old said: “I learnt a lot from him (Grant) in the mental strength side, he pushed that pretty hard when he was caddying for me and I guess also the competition side of things – everything in our house growing up, whether intentional or not, was a competition – who finished dinner first, table tennis or tennis... I remember dad didn’t talk to me the first time I beat him in golf for a couple of days.

“Later on, to have some access to Steve Hansen (former All Blacks coach), a couple of the All Black guys to talk about what they did... It’s pretty cool to see what they did on a high-performance level – that was when they won a couple of World Cups in a row.

“To see what they did on the inside was pretty cool and I tried to take a little bit of that into golf.”

The world No. 30 was speaking at a press conference ahead of the US$2 million (S$2.65 million) Singapore Classic, which begins on Thursday at Laguna National, as the DP World Tour returns to Singapore for the first time since 2014.

Fox enjoyed a stellar 2022, placing a career-high second on the DP World Tour rankings after winning two of his three overall titles, as well as recording four runner-up and four top-10 finishes in the season.

Several players also achieved breakthroughs last season. China’s Wu Ashun ended a four-year drought with a win at the Kenya Open, while Malaysia’s Gavin Green finished a career-high 31st on the DP World Tour rankings.

Green, 29, said: “It’s as close as I get to home as of right now on the DP Tour schedule.

“It’s comfortable – I’m used to the heat, used to the golf course in terms of the grass and the way it reacts.”

As the inaugural Singapore Classic gets underway, an arbitration hearing to determine the future of LIV Golf players on the European Tour is also taking place this week at the Sports Resolutions Arbitration and Media Centre in London.

The five-day hearing, which began on Monday, is focused on DP World Tour rules regarding conflicting events and its ability to enforce them on members who compete without permission in the Saudi Arabia-funded breakaway LIV Golf series.

Fox hopes the ongoing hearing will not take the attention away from the Singapore Classic, adding: “It’s really hard to know how it’s going to go.

“It’s a very narrow arbitration in terms of whether can we enforce our regulations or not.

“I think the PGA Tour regulations are quite a lot stronger legally than ours are, so I don’t know... I hope the tour has some favourable outcome from it, but we’re probably not going to know that for a while.

“In the bigger picture, we’re obviously in a strange place for golf – there’s a lot of good stuff going on, there’s a lot of disruption, it’s going to be very interesting to see what goes on in the next six months to two years with all the legal stuff.”

Spaniard Rafa Cabrera-Bello, a four-time winner on the DP World Tour, added: “This is not something that is new – it’s new in the sense that it’s a new tour, but the fact that some players who were not European Tour members were not in the Ryder Cup...

“I can see different points of view, I have my own personal opinion but, again, it’s not for me to decide.”