Grinding golf on a difficult course paid dividends for Ryan Fox who grabbed top Australasian honours at the European Tour’s Trophee Hassan II tournament in Morocco.

Fox signed for scores of 72-71-71-71 for a 3-under total for the week and outright 12^th position.

After a missed cut at last week’s Spanish Open it was an impressive fightback from the long hitting New Zealander who has played just three times since a third-place finish at the Maybank tournament in early February.

The Royal Dar Es Salam course proved a tricky proposition for the field over the course of the week with Alexander Levy’s 8-under winning total a testament to the difficult nature of scoring.

Only 21 players finished in red figures, Andrew Dodt among those to fall victim to the vagaries of the layout.

Several golfers over the course of the week found themselves unable to recover after a poor hole and Dodt was among their number with a disappointing 78 on Sunday.

Entering the final round 4-under and inside the top-10, his struggles began with a bogey at the first and improved little as he turned in 39 then amassed the same number on the inward half. He dropped 24 places down the leaderbaord for an eventual T32 finish.

Marcus Fraser moved the opposite direction on Sunday with his best score of the week, a 3-under 69 leapfrogging him 22 places up the leaderboard.

After managing just six birdies in total the first three rounds, Fraser found four on the final day to go with a bogey at the 17^th as he posted his best finish since the ISPS Handa World Super 6 Perth.

Fraser looks to be settling into the year after a lacklustre start to the season saw him miss four straight cuts before the Perth event.

Josh Geary is another who will be pleased with his week after making just his second cut since earning playing rights on the European Tour late last year.

Geary signed for scores of 74-73-73-73 for a 5-over total which was good for a share of 46^th.

Wade Ormsby was the last of the Australasians to qualify for the weekend but, like Dodt, started going backwards early and couldn’t recover.

A final round 80 was both disappointing and costly as he dropped 35 places down the standings to T52.

Jason Scrivener, Jack Munro, Brett Rumford, Sam Brazel and Adam Bland all missed the cut while Jason Norris withdrew after 15 holes of his second round for unknown reasons.