Fox's limited prep as US Open returns to site of Campbell's triumph

By Christopher Reive

Ryan Fox has fond memories of the 2005 US Open at Pinehurst No 2.

Then a student at the University of Auckland who had just started to get involved in tournament golf, he watched as Michael Campbell held his nerve to clinch his maiden major championship. Campbell went into the final round trailing by four shots, but minimised damage and took his opportunities to finish with a final round one-under-par.

That saw him finish the tournament as the only player in the field to shoot even par, with Tiger Woods second at two-over.

“I think I took a couple of uni classes off that morning to watch it,” Fox recalled. “I was probably just starting my journey as a golfer at that point, just starting to play some tournament golf and I absolutely loved it.”

This week, the US Open returns to Pinehurst No 2 for just the second time since Campbell’s triumph, and Fox will be among the 156-strong field taking on the course.

“I’ve got great memories of watching Campbell win, and got very lucky a couple of years later at the New Zealand Open to sit down with him and talk through it properly, and I also had lunch with him [on Wednesday] and got to hear a couple of stories of that win in ′05, which was great.”

Campbell isn’t the only Kiwi to have tasted victory at the course, with Danny Lee winning the US Amateur Championship there in 2008.

Things have changed since then at the famed North Carolina venue, with the course restored in 2011, which saw the rough areas replaced by native areas where grasses grow in the sand to create what Fox referred to as a “wasteland” effect.

“This place is just brutal,” Fox said.

“You’re going to have to drive it pretty well. It is relatively wide for a US Open, but the penalty for missing is severe. You’re going to see some guys get absolutely screwed – [be] a couple of yards off fairways and not have shots – and you’re going to see guys hit it way offline and have shots out of the wasteland.

“It’s all patchy; you can get some great lies and have a full shot or you can literally struggle to chip out sideways, so that’s the first thing to navigate.”

But whereas missed fairways are sure to test the athletes this week, the talking point will be the greens, which are fast, slopey and riddled with danger in the form of deep bunkers should the ball run off.

“You’ve got to be really, really patient, you’ve got to be really, really conservative going into the greens; hit at the middle of the green and if the putter works, you can potentially shoot a score. If not, you’re hanging on for dear life.

“I really feel like it’s going to be one of those traditional US Opens where even-par for the week is going to be a fantastic score and it may not quite win, but it will certainly finish in the top 10.”

Fox comes into the event on the back of just his second week off in the past 13 weeks – his first break after a run of six tournaments in a row.

In that stretch, he made five of six cuts, including two top-five finishes and another top 10 to jump inside the top 100 on the FedEx Cup rankings for the season and improve his claim to a spot on the International President’s Cup team.

“I’ve been chasing it over here a little bit trying to get some points up. I did manage to make a few points over the past few weeks, which was nice.

“It was one of those ones where I didn’t realise how tired I was until we stopped... Tuesday last week, I’d just been like, ‘wow, I’m, I’m absolutely knackered here’.

“It was the body and the mind, everything just kind of went ‘I’m done now’ so it was nice to just put the clubs away for a week. I think I played one round of golf last week and did a bunch of fishing and hung out with the kids and did some swimming and stuff like that.

“It was nice to just mentally recharge, to physically recharge and, after the amount of golf I played, the best prep for the US Open was actually not touching the clubs, which sounds weird coming into a major.”

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission