Foxy's triumphant reverse move

Warning: For golf addicts only!

At our golf club a few of us play a side bet that if you hit a shot backwards, unintentionally or on purpose, you have to buy the rest of your playing group a drink. It sometimes happens because your ball hits a tree or you maybe fail to get your ball up a bank near the green and it rolls back past where you’d hit from.

But one of the greatest days in New Zealand sport has included a shot that Ryan Fox had to hit backwards.

It happened on the demanding par three 15^th hole at Royal Birkdale in the final round of the 154^th Open Championship. At the time Fox was tied for the lead at 9 under par but had hit his tee shot into one of the numerous devilishly designed bunkers near the green.

The ball had run across the sand to settle next to one of the vertical rivetted sides of the bunker. It meant he couldn’t play his ball towards the hole because he just couldn’t swing his club back. There was just one option. Play it out backwards, away from the green, away from the hole and hope like heck you could chip up with the 3^rd shot, make the putt and score only one over par on the hole.

In golf it’s called taking your medicine. On the 15th hole, Ryan Fox swallowed a significant spoonful of it. But despite being much further away from the hole after his second shot than he was after his first, a brilliant follow-up sequence of a chip and just one putt limited the damage.

He then made birdie on the 16^th, a par on the 17^thand one of the most brilliant birdies in major championship golf history on the very difficult 18^th and final hole.

Winning an event as important as The Open is not just about taking one’s chances when a birdie is possible after a good approach shot. It’s also about limiting the damage when you’ve played your way seriously out of position on a hole. The man who finished second, Cameron Young, gave a classic demonstration of that on his final hole when after his tee shot went into a bunker, he was subsequently hitting from long grass and then another bunker but somehow he holed a putt to make a 5 when he was staring down the face of at least a 6.

When Ryan Fox’s final round is analysed and talked about – as it will be at golf clubs up and down the country for many days – it may be that his play on that final par three was the most important of all.

At a time when golf in New Zealand is experiencing an unprecedented surge in playing popularity, this win by New Zealander at an event first staged in 1860 could encourage even more to take up this most physically and mentally challenging of all sports.

But if your interest in whacking a little dimpled ball about on some grass paddocks lined with trees and sandpits has been peeked by Ryan Fox’s history-making victory, just remember that your ball doesn’t always get to go forwards every time.

It helps if it does - but as Foxy has shown, sometimes even the best have to change direction.

Guess he’ll be buying a few drinks after his backwards shot too.