‘Dream come true’: Ryan Fox’s eagerly anticipated Masters invite arrives

It’s official – Ryan Fox will tee it up at the Masters in April.

As the Kiwi golfer told Stuff last month, he’d eagerly been awaiting the invitation to Augusta National to land in his mailbox, which it did this week.

The 35-year-old called it a “dream come true” in a post on social media, which accompanied a photo of the invite.

Lining up at Augusta National will tick off the final major for Fox, whose superb 2022, by far the best year of his career, has opened all sorts of doors in 2023.

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“The Masters is the one I grew up watching at home…you feel like you kind of know the event,” Fox told Stuff last month.

“To get a chance to go there is amazing. It’s one of those things, at the end of my career, if I hadn’t ticked it off.”

Fox had planned to attend a Masters trip with his father, All Blacks great Grant Fox, a decade ago, only for other commitments to force him to bail.

“I’ve played it on Xbox, if that counts,” Fox said of the famous Augusta National course.

Fox finished last year ranked 29th in the world, well inside the top-50 (qualification for Masters), after bagging two wins on the European Tour, four second placings and a third, plus another three top-10 finishes en route to finishing second in the Race for Dubai.

He pocketed a cool €3,365,304.74 (NZ$5,571,076.91) in prize money, and has now set his sights on another of his life-long goals – earning PGA Tour status.

As it stands, Fox has 12 starts lined up on the premier tour in 2023, including the four majors, a bunch of invitational events (provided he remains in the top-50), and the Scottish Open (co-sanctioned with the European Tour).

That’s a dozen opportunities to earn more starts and stack up all-important FedEx Cup points – the top 125 at the end of the year earn a card for the following season. Winning a PGA Tour event comes with a minimum two years exemption.

“To be honest, in the last couple of years, I thought it was gone….but if I go there, and I can play my way on to the PGA Tour, it’s always been the dream at the back of my head,” Fox told Stuff.

“That’s where the best players play, that’s where you want to play.”