Exclusive: Ryan Fox's Mental Coach Discusses Fascinating Psychology Behind Kiwi's Incredible Open Victory

Ryan Fox's Open Championship victory was remarkable for several reasons.

Firstly, he was only the second golfer outside of the world's top-50 to win a Major in the past 15 years and his best finish at The Open in nine previous attempts was T16th.

Then there was the fact that before round three began, his chance of success - according to bookmakers - were pretty slim, with some pricing him as high as +75000 (750/1).

Yet, through committed golf and a positive mindset, he stood on the 18th tee on Sunday knowing a birdie would clinch the Claret Jug while a bogey would see it slip away. Fox slammed his metaphorical visor down and said 'bring it on.'

The sequence of three shots which followed over the subsequent 10 minutes were all just about perfect and the Kiwi - whose grandad played cricket for New Zealand and whose father was an All Blacks rugby union star - cemented his own place in sporting lore.

Fox's cavalier attitude wasn't developed naturally as child, though, and it certainly didn't come about by accident through adulthood. Weekly work with renowned performance coach Karl Morris since 2019 had helped lead to the 39-year-old's big moment.

Speaking with Golf Monthly's Jonny Leighfield days after Fox's extremely popular triumph, Morris pulled back the curtain on what sort of messages the two-time PGA Tour winner was focusing on during the sharp end of The Open.

Asked specifically why he thought Fox went for it all on the 72nd hole with multiple options on the table, Morris said: "It's something we've talked a lot about. If you listen to the conversation he had with his caddie, the underpinning of that was acceptance.

"He was willing to accept that taking that decision on brought into play that he could have knocked it into a bunker or he could have ended up taking bogey, but he was willing to accept the outcome.

"And instead of being satisfied with a playoff or a par, he went in pursuit of a birdie and victory.

"The crossover for club players is that a lot of golfers are playing to avoid mistakes rather than pursuing good shots. We all fall into that trap if we're not careful and then you start trying to protect your score.

"And there's a different set of chemicals going through your system when you're trying to protect or avoid something as opposed to pursuing something.

"That swing he made up the last was a pure example of pursuit golf. He was pursuing, in that moment, a good shot. He was very clear in what he was trying to do with the shot and I don't think there was an ounce of avoidance in there in that moment.

"It's incredible that he managed to find the reserves to do that, but ultimately that was what was going on [in his head]."

The 72nd hole was effectively a microcosm of Fox's entire final round, with the Auckland-born pro taking the initiative and deciding his own fate. Not even his caddie, Dean Smith, had much of a say - although that was by design.

Before The Open began, Morris - who has worked with the likes of Louis Oosthuizen, Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke, Lee Westwood, Ian Woosnam, Paul McGinley, Harry Hall and Laurie Canter over the course of his career - sat down with Fox and caddie Dean Smith and laid out a suggestion.

The idea was that Smith took a back seat in terms of helping Fox see the kind of shot he needed to hit and simply focussed on providing cold, hard facts.

The team agreed it might help free up the shot-making New Zealander a little bit out on course. As it turned out, the call was inspired.

Morris said: "We'd spoken at the start of the week... and his caddie is brilliant, Dean Smith, but with the best of intentions, he was getting a little bit involved in the decision making for the shots.

"Sometimes if a caddie is trying to do his best and he's saying 'I think you should do this' or 'it looks like it might be this' and the player sees something completely different, then there can be what I call a blurred map. You're not quite sure about what you're trying to do.

"So we talked at the beginning of the week that all Deano was going to do was get to the shot, give Foxy the hard data, y'know, 'it's 174, the wind's off the left, pin's back right, it's sloping this way' - just the hard numbers, and then ask him 'what's the shot?' and Foxy would verbalize what the shot was.

"That way, he's got a really, really clear intention of what he's trying to do but he's also owning the whole process. It's not 'why did you say this?' or 'why did you tell me to hit 6-iron?'

"These player-caddie relationships, everybody is trying to do their best all the time, but sometimes I can just sit down with them and in many ways state the obvious.

"But sometimes the obvious is a bit elusive when we're in the middle of it all and everybody is trying to get someone to play better."

In his winner's press conference at Royal Birkdale, Fox actually paid tribute to the work he's carried out with Morris - who has just released a book called 'The Mind Caddie' (with accompanying app) - and explained even more about how the Manchester-born performance coach helped him land the Claret Jug.

Fox said: "Talking with my sports psych, Karl Morris, he was here earlier this week, and we kind of chatted about I'm better when I create a shot, and creating a shot is almost getting the data off Dean, my caddie, and then I make the decision on everything else, and then I verbalize what I'm going to do to him.

"I did that really well the whole of this week, especially coming down the stretch today.

"The other thing we worked on was, especially over the putter, just take some deep breaths.

"I do tend to get a little quick at times, and just taking a second longer, especially over a putt, just get myself ready, get myself relaxed. I did that a lot down the stretch. I'm pretty sure you could probably see it on camera as well.

"There was a lot of deep breaths walking down some fairways just trying to compose myself. It obviously worked pretty well."