Ryan Fox is taking a different approach to this week’s stop on the PGA Tour.

After the fun of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans teams event, the tour heads back to Texas for a return to normal service for the CJ Cup Byron Nelson.

But while the tournament sees the tour shift back to its usual format, Fox’s week will again look slightly different.

Fox’s Kiwi coach, Marcus Wheelhouse, has made the trip up as he looks to get his game to where it knows it can be, having been on the verge of that but not quite getting there during his season so far.

Fox estimated it was the first time since before the Covid-19 pandemic that Wheelhouse had been to a tournament with him, having also worked with coach Jamie Gough a lot over the past few years; a relationship that came about as Wheelhouse was unable to travel while Fox was playing most of his golf in Europe.

“It’s something that Marcus put to me at the start of the year, you know, if you need me at all, I’m available to come up. It worked out really well this week. Dallas is a pretty easy city to get to from Auckland, and I’m by myself this week, which makes it easier to be completely focused on golf in that respect and do a bit of grinding with him,” Fox told the Herald.

“It’s worked really well and [we’ve] made some good progress the first couple of days he’s been up. It’s just nice to have eyes on. My other coach, Jamie, has been European-based for the majority of the year, so I haven’t seen him much either, so having eyes on has certainly helped out a lot. [I’m] making a bit of progress and hopefully I can take that into the tournament days.”

It’s a good opportunity for Fox, who admits he has “not been over self-sufficient coaching-wise”, to get another set of eyes on what he’s doing as he looks to make necessary adjustments to find the sort of performance that has been alluding him.

“I’ve always been one that little and often is more important for me for keeping on top of things. I’ve always found that a little bit hard remotely; you send a couple of swings or whatever, and [it’s] very different than having someone there, having eyes on for an hour or so, and I think, personally for me, I get a lot more out of having someone watch a lot of shots.

“I can go back to Marcus and go, ‘hey, look, this is what we’re working on, am I doing it?’ and get sort of real-time feedback, which when I’m doing it by myself, I struggle to do that to be honest,” he said.

“It’s going to be good that he can walk around and see it, what it’s like inside the ropes as well, because under tournament pressure is a little bit different than practice rounds and on the range. It’s good he can see everything and keep me on the right track going forward.”

Fox comes into this week’s tournament at TPC Craig Ranch sitting at No 133 on the FedEx Cup standings, while he has also fallen to No 116 on the official world golf rankings.

He and playing partner Garrick Higgo missed the cut in last week’s teams event as they struggled in the second four alternate shot format, however, Fox is going into this week with the confidence knowing his game has been there or thereabouts for most of the season.

“It’s been pretty close, my golf game, for a while. It’s not too far away,” he said.

“I’m still fighting a couple of things left over from the hip last year that I couldn’t do body-wise, and under pressure, I’ve been reverting back to some of those patterns a little bit. [I’m] still trying to get rid of that a little bit, because the body can actually do what it’s supposed to do on a golf swing now.

“It’s just been good having eyes on and monitoring all the little things and just making sure that it’s getting better. It’s been close for a little while and it just needed something to kind of get it all the way there, and I think having Marcus up there this week is going to be that.”

Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.