SOUTHPORT – The birdie putt was eleven feet. Cameron Young had already signed his card at nine under par, believing a Sunday clubhouse lead at the 154th Open Championship might be enough. Ryan Fox read the line from the right, settled his stance, and rolled it in. It was the most significant putt of his career, and it won him the Claret Jug.
The 39-year-old New Zealander closed with a four-under 68 Sunday at Royal Birkdale to finish ten under par – one clear of Young – and became the Open Champion in a week that had already written its own chapter in the record books. Fox won his first major by doing exactly what he told his caddie Dean he would do standing on the 18th tee: hit two perfect shots and make the birdie. He did all three.
“To play that last hole how I did, I stood on the tee and said to my caddie Dean, we’re going to try to win this,” Fox said after signing his card. “I hit two perfect shots.”
Young, who had shot a final-round 64 to reach nine under, watched as Fox drained the putt that beat him by a single stroke. “I thought ten had a decent chance,” Young said of his own closing total. “Scraping out even par on a Sunday in a major can be difficult.” It was a generous reading of a 64 that would have won many Opens and fell exactly one shot short at this one, Yahoo Sports reported.
The week at Birkdale had been historically unusual before Sunday arrived. Three players – Lucas Herbert in Round 2, Sam Burns in Round 2, and Fox himself on Saturday – each shot 62, matching the lowest score ever recorded in a men’s major. It was the first tournament in major championship history to produce three such rounds. Fox was one of them, and that 62 pushed him from outside the top fifty to co-leader with Herbert entering the final round. The historical precedent was not in his favour going into Sunday: of the players who had previously shot 62 in a major, not one had won the tournament they did it in.
Burns entered Sunday holding the lead after a week that had made him the prohibitive favourite. He was undone early – three bogeys in his first six holes removed the advantage before the morning round had settled. By the time the back nine mattered, the championship had narrowed to Fox working through his round and Young coming in with his 64 already on the board.
Fox’s final round was composed rather than spectacular. Four birdies against a bogey, built through a back nine that produced his most decisive scoring: a birdie at the par-five 14th, back-to-back birdies at 16 and 17, and then the birdie at 18 that closed the championship. The 11-foot putt on the final green arrived on a hole Fox had chosen to attack rather than manage. He attacked it, and the ball fell.
Bryson DeChambeau was the week’s other dominant storyline, though not through his score. A two-shot penalty on Friday for improving his lie led to an 80-minute delay, a crowd-noise controversy, and a post-round dispute. As Eastern Herald reported, Rory McIlroy called DeChambeau’s reaction “performative” and said he found DeChambeau’s conduct unacceptable during a major. DeChambeau finished tied for fourteenth. The R&A ruling was not overturned and the penalty stood.
At 39, Fox becomes one of the older first-time major winners in the Open’s modern era. He competes on the LIV Golf circuit, and the Open Championship remains the one major that does not restrict LIV players from entering without special exemptions. His Claret Jug is the first LIV player major win of the 2026 season. Whether it changes his eligibility status at Augusta National and the other majors that still restrict LIV competitors is a question for the governing bodies rather than Sunday’s leaderboard.
Fox’s earlier 62 on Saturday had already placed him in the conversation about what Birkdale had produced. As Eastern Herald covered when Fox completed the first triple-62 in major history, the precedent for converting such a round into a championship was nonexistent. Fox made it existent, on the 72nd hole, from eleven feet.
Young left Royal Birkdale having played the finest tournament golf of his career. A four-under Sunday, a total of nine under, a closing 64 that required everything the course allowed and produced a runner-up finish. The margin between Young’s excellent week and Fox’s championship was a single putt sunk by an older man who had announced on the 18th tee that he intended to make it. He did, and the Claret Jug went with him.
Royal Birkdale added another entry to a record it has held since Branden Grace first shot 62 in a major here in 2017. Four of the eight times a player has matched that score in a men’s major have come at this course. The 154th Open produced three such rounds in a week and one champion who turned his into history’s first major-winning 62. That is the detail that survives Sunday’s final scoreboard, and it belongs entirely to Ryan Fox.
