Kiwi Ryan Fox is now a two-time PGA TOUR winner in 2025 following his victory at the RBC Canadian Open.
WITH his national soccer team watching on, Kiwi Ryan Fox has won his second US PGA TOUR event in the space of four starts with a memorable victory in the RBC Canadian Open.
Sealing the win with what he described as the best shot of his life, Fox outlasted American Sam Burns at the fourth hole of a sudden-death playoff, with his three-wood from 269 yards settling just two metres from the hole.
While he would miss the eagle try, a three-putt par from Burns and a tap in birdie from Fox was enough to claim victory, achieved while the New Zealand’s All Whites soccer team cheered on from a marquee adjacent to the 18th green.
“It’s the best shot I’ve ever hit in my life. There’s nothing close to that,” said Fox.
“We had a couple scrappy holes there, and then to hit the shot I hit on 18 on the fourth playoff, it was pretty surreal.”
Already through to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the All Whites defeated African champions Ivory Coast 1-0 in Toronto a day before Fox’s win, capping an outstanding weekend for New Zealand sport.
“To have the Kiwi support out there, it was great. They were there all day,” said Fox, “To be able to meet them all there at the end and get a photo with them was pretty special.”
Fox jumped from 119 to 32 on the Official World Golf Ranking as a result of the Canadian Open win and his victory at the Myrtle Beach Classic a month prior.
Another win for Niemann
IN the June 2025 edition, Inside Golf trumpeted the achievements of Joaquin Niemann after he had won his third tournament on the LIV Golf Tour in 2025 and his fifth since joining the breakaway golfing circuit at the start of the 2024 season.
A month on from the third win came a fourth as Niemann’s domination of LIV continued, the Chilean claiming victory at the LIV Golf Virginia event.
Niemann shot a sizzling bogey-free 8-under 63 in the final round, for a 15-under par total, one shot better than Graeme McDowell and Anirban Lahiri, with the 26-year-old becoming the winningest individual golfer in LIV Golf history with six titles, all in his last 21 regular-season starts.
In his four wins in 2025 Niemann is a combined 27-under in final rounds, while the victory in Virginia was his first in the US, his previous triumphs coming in Adelaide, Singapore and Mexico City. Last year he won in Mayakoba and Jeddah.
Unfortunately, Niemann wasn’t able to take his hot form from Virginia to Oakmont and the US Open the week following, where he missed the 36-hole cut.
Next up for LIV and for Niemann was a tournament in Dallas towards the end of June, before events in Spain and the UK flanking The Open Championship.
Was Oakmont a US Open farewell for Phil?
Six runner-up placings, without a win, Phil Mickelson may have made his last US Open appearance.
AFTER back-to-back rounds of four-over par 74 at Oakmont, a score that would see him miss the cut by just one shot, and at 55 years of age, Phil Mickelson may have played his last US Open.
With this the final year of the five-year US Open exemption earned with his victory in the 2021 PGA Championship, and now competing on the LIV Tour where world rankings points aren’t awarded, Mickelson has limited opportunity to qualify for the 2026 event at Shinnecock Hills.
And judging by the response to questions directed at USGA officials during a press conference early in the week at Oakmont, all indications are that Mickelson has little chance of being granted a special exemption in 12 months’ time.
Therefore the 2025 staging of the event has likely brought down the curtain on possibly the most remarkable US Open career by a player never to have won.
Mickelson first played the US Open in 1990 as an amateur, finishing 29th in his debut appearance, he would play in 33 more, only missing the 2017 tournament when he stayed home to attend his daughter Amanda’s high school graduation.
He was a runner up an incredible six times, one of those occasions a double bogey on the 72nd hole saw him lose to Australian Geoff Ogilvy in 2006, another when the late Payne Stewart beat Mickelson with a birdie on the final hole at Pinehurst in 1999.
Outspoken and somewhat polarising, especially since his defection to the LIV Tour, Mickelson bids a likely farewell to the event as one of 17 players to win three different majors, but without the final piece to the Grand Slam puzzle.
Winners
Congratulations to the Inside Golf readers who will be the recipients of the recently released book, Ian Baker-FInch: To Hell and Back.
Written by Geoff Saunders, the authorised biography, the first written about the popular Queenslander, details Baker-Finch’s golfing beginnings, his days as a young professional, his Open Championship triumph in 1991, the golfing struggles that followed, and to his 25 years in the US as a television analyst.
It’s a great read, one which the following list of Inside Golf readers, winners of a copy of To Hell and Back, are sure to enjoy.
Rosalyn Toohey
Tullamarine, VIC
Peter Keogh
Huskisson, NSW
Darrell Margerison
Nudgee, QLD
Craig Wilson
Moore Creek, NSW
Paul Dignan
Novar Gardens, SA
And if you missed out on winning a copy of To Hell and Back, it is now available in bookshops everywhere.
An amateur standout, winning the NSW Amateur and Australian Medal in 1988, before going down in the final of the 1990 Australian Amateur Championship, Rob Willis turned professional in 1992, playing the Australasian and Asian Tours, with his highlight being his victory in the 1995 Dubai Creek Open and third placing at the European Tour's Dubai Dessert Classic. A former Editor of Golf Australia Magazine, Willis, who ventured away from golf for a period to be the media manager for the NRL's Cronulla Sharks, has been a contributor to PGA Australia's PGA Magazine for over a decade and for Inside Golf since its first edition back in 2005. 
