Kiwi golf professional Ryan Fox is prepared to not play another tournament overseas for the rest of 2020.
In an interview with Stuff’s online video series Inside My Bubble from his Northcote Point home, Fox spoke candidly about being in the lockdown bubble with his wife, his training regime and his fears that because of travel restrictions he may not re-join the European Tour this year.
“I generally play 30-odd events in 20-odd different countries a year so travel’s going to be very difficult for the rest of the year,” Fox explained to Stuff host Carol Hirschfeld.
“That’s going to be the biggest issue for us, in Europe every country is going to have their own rules and restrictions in getting in and I just don’t know what that’s going to be going forward.
“I’m prepared to start up again in June and almost be normal again but I’m also prepared I might not actually play any tournaments overseas for the rest of the year and that’s a scary thought.
“We’re going to get a fair warning before actually going back on tour so I’ll have plenty of time to get my golf game back in order.”
Only days before the Level 4 COVID-19 lockdown was announced Fox and his wife moved into their new home and he has been able to turn one part of the double garage into a home gym.
In terms of his golf game, he is not doing much with the golf clubs, remaining inside the cupboard, but he hopes as the lockdown continues he will start doing some indoor putting and set up a net to keep practising his driving.
“I played a lot of golf at the end of last year and the start of this year and this was just a scheduled break for me anyway,” Fox explained.
“Hopefully lockdown ends and I can at least get back out on the golf course at some point pretty soon.
“The new house had a little bit of room in a double garage so I bought a home gym and set it up only a few days before lockdown, it’s got used pretty much every day so far which is nice and that’s keeping both me and my wife sane at the moment.”
He would normally be walking about 10km a day, five days a week playing on the tour so it’s been a little hard for him to keep that sort of exercise up during lockdown.
Trying to avoid the fridge and the cupboard has also been high on Fox’s agenda in the past two weeks, but once he gets into the gym he knows exactly what he needs to do to keep his body on track for his game once things are back to normal.
“In terms of the specific stuff, I have three programs, a cardio one, a golf stability one obviously that’s really important for balance at that kind of stuff, and then a little bit of weight training which is focussed around the glutes and a little bit of upper body just to keep everything in balance.
“For us it’s all about power, it’s not doing a lot of endurance stuff you want speed and all the gym stuff is geared a little bit that way snd then geared towards the stability stuff as well.”
Ryan Fox had a good start to the year, currently ranked 22 on the European Tour (One place ahead of world number one Rory McIlroy) so the lockdown financially is not going to affect Fox as much as with others.
“I’m probably one of the lucky ones in that I had a good start to this year, a few months without any income won’t hurt too much.”
“Obviously it would be nice to be playing, it’s my job and I love playing golf, but I’m taking solace in the fact that everyone is missing live sport and I know a lot of people are missing playing golf recreationally and also being able to watch golf so hopefully when this is all over we will again see how good sport is in society and it will actually help make a lot of sports popular again.”