No dickheads, please, it’s The Open
A general view of the 18th green scoreboard displaying the final score of winner Ryan Fox of New Zealand during Day Four of the The 154th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale on July 19, 2026 in Southport, England. (Photo by Kate McShane/R&A/R&A via Getty Images)
Humility is the mark of a true champion, and if we learned anything from The 154th Open Championship, it’s that golf still has a soul.
Irish golf can be proud of Cork amateur David Howard, who has been asked by Great Britain and Ireland Walker Cup captain Dean Robertson to join the squad and several of this season’s domestic championship winners in a practice session at Lahinch on Tuesday following his incredible performance in Southport.
Howard, whose lifelong battle with Cystic Fibrosis was one of the inspirational stories of the week at Royal Birkdale, epitomises everything you want to see from a golfer: ambition, modesty and determination to get the utmost from whatever God-given talent you might have.
Tommy Fleetwood was another inspiration to youngsters everywhere.
So too was Ryan Fox, the Champion Golfer of the Year — a worthy winner that would have made his All-Black father proud in that he personified the “no dickheads” ethos that makes New Zealand the world’s greatest rugby powerhouse.
The All Blacks were an inspiration to Europe’s Ryder Cup team at Bethpage Black last year, as Paul McGinley made clear in the post-round chat with Fox beside the 18th green.
Asked to speak about the All-Blacks culture and what they represent, Fox said: “It's just excellence from them, really.”
“And a lot of respect and humility,” McGinley ventured. “It's probably the greatest team ethos I've ever come across.”
“Yep, they've got a pretty good record,” Fox said. “But when they have every right to be arrogant, they're just not.
“There's just an inherent no dickheads policy, and they've just kept that up throughout the years. We’ve got a got an incredible record because of it, and as I said to be compared to them is a huge compliment.”
Bryson DeChambeau has talent to burn, but despite his immense popularity with the young and old, he did himself and the game few favours with his petulant attitude in the wake of his rules breach on the fifth hole on Friday.
To make matters worse, journalist Geoff Shackelford of the influential Substack newsletter, The Quadrilateral, revealed that while making his case against a two-stroke penalty for violating Rule 8.1, the Californian asked rules officials to bring President Donald Trump into the conversation.
“Sources with knowledge of the thirty-minute discussion said DeChambeau wanted the President to join a campaign against the eventual two-stroke penalty that ultimately dropped his score from 66 to 68,” Shackelford writes.
“The request came after DeChambeau had already been given a rare bit of special dispensation to return to the scene where he’d stomped around tall fescue rough in his backswing. (The R&A’s hard card states that “a player’s scorecard is officially returned to the Committee when the player has physically left the recording office/area.”)
Rory McIlroy went scorched earth on DeChambeau and made no effort to disguise his thoughts on the American’s integrity or lack of same.
“Whether it was careless or whether it was intentional, I don't think it matters,” he said. “Look, he's going to say -- like, again, I'm not in his mind. I'm not in his -- but it didn't look good.”
Scottie Scheffler might have liked to say more, but he didn’t egregiously throw DeChambeau under the bus; instead, he pointed the finger at the Tour and the players who knowingly push the rules to the limit by mashing down with their clubs behind the ball and carelessly treading down undergrowth on our TV screens every week.
“All I'll say is Bryson, I've known him for a long time, and he's a lot of things, but he's definitely not a cheater,” the world number one said. “I've never seen him cheat once…
“When I was growing up, if this was the line between things that were -- like if this was the line, here are the rules and this was the right side of it and this is when you're doing things against the rule, you always tried to stray really far that way.
“I feel like at times, sometimes you see players maybe push it a little bit further than they should.”
Scheffler’s comments on the professional game cut far deeper than those of McIlroy, who said DeChambeau would still be “great for the tournament” should he turn up for President Trump at September’s Amgen Irish Open at Doonbeg.
As for Fox, who watched Russell Knox make a 40-footer at the 72nd hole and another in the play-off at Ballyliffin to deny him his maiden DP World Tour win in the 2018 Irish Open, he had to wait until 2019 to break through in Perth.
His aim in golf was “just to get on a major tour” and now, he’s a Major winner.
“I was a rookie on the DP World Tour at 30. I was a rookie on the PGA Tour at 37 and now a major champion at 39,” Fox said on Sunday night. “I'm definitely not following the trend at the moment. But if I can keep getting better a little bit every year, I'll be pretty happy.”
The Open gets better each and every year. It’s also forced to be more commercial but somehow retains its magic.
The official attendance at Royal Birkdale was 306,000, which is a new Championship record.
Roll on Portmarnock, where the financial windfall and the benefits for the game worldwide promise to be historic.
