“No Idea Where That Envelope Is”: Ryan Fox’s First Claret Jug Slip-Up Came Before He Even Got Home

New Zealand’s Ryan Fox hadn’t slept. A 4:15 a.m. pickup followed a celebration that didn’t wind down until 3 a.m., and by the time he reached the airport Monday morning, he was hauling two trophy cases through security, the real Claret Jug and its replica, both too big to call carry-on luggage in any normal sense. Security gave him funny looks. Strangers asked what was in the case. Fox explained it was the British Open trophy, got a “did you win it?” in response, and said yes. Somewhere in the chaos of that trip home, before he even landed, the new Champion Golfer of the Year had already misplaced part of what the R&A handed him: a small envelope.

That envelope was supposed to carry care instructions, how to clean the trophy, what not to do with an almost 150-year-old piece of silver. Fox got the trophy, a carry case, and that one envelope. He hasn’t seen it since.

“I think there was a little envelope about like care of it. Like, do you have to clean it or whatever, but I have no idea where that envelope is, by the way,” Fox said on the Fore Play podcast.

That gap isn’t unique to him. On the same episode, one of the hosts recalled hearing the identical story from 2023 champion Brian Harman: just a trophy and a “bring it back next year.” Fox confirmed his handover went exactly the same way.

Fox’s win mattered more than the paperwork, but the golf was the point that made the story land. He opened with rounds of 72 and 68 at Royal Birkdale, nothing that put him near the lead through 36 holes. Saturday changed everything: a 9-under 62, one of three matching rounds shot that week, the best in men’s major championship history. That vaulted him into the final pairing on Sunday alongside 54-hole leader Sam Burns. He closed with a 68, capped by a 12-foot birdie on the 72nd hole, to finish at 10-under 270, one shot clear of Cameron Young.

None of that explains what happened once the celebrating started.

An honor system with no instruction manual

Without any written guidance to fall back on, Fox cleaned the Claret Jug the way anyone might improvise at 3 a.m. after a party. Wine had been poured into it and drunk from it for hours in the players’ lounge at Royal Birkdale.

Before packing it away, he tipped the leftover wine out, rinsed it with water, dried it, and zipped it into the case. It was in a car within the hour. The smell lingered, though. His five-year-old later asked if there was still wine inside because she could smell it.

None of this slowed him down at the airport, where the bigger issue was seating. Fox ended up on the same flight out of Liverpool as Cameron Young, the man he’d beaten by a single stroke less than 24 hours earlier. Young was gracious about it, Fox said, and the two spoke about family plans on the flight rather than the shot that had decided the tournament.

The Claret Jug is now on its way to New Zealand, where Fox said it’s “going to get some use.” Whatever cleaning instructions were in that envelope will have to be reconstructed from memory, or ignored entirely, the same way they were on the first night he had the trophy in his hands.

That’s likely how it stays for the next twelve months. The R&A hands over the trophy on trust, not paperwork, and nothing about Fox’s story suggests that changes before he returns it at St Andrews next July. Until then, the only real instruction manual is whatever Brian Harman and every other champion before him managed to figure out on their own. For a win that’s been 28 major starts in the making, the only hiccup so far has nothing to do with his golf and everything to do with a piece of paper the R&A never expected him to need in the first place.

The post “No Idea Where That Envelope Is”: Ryan Fox’s First Claret Jug Slip-Up Came Before He Even Got Home appeared first on EssentiallySports.