Ryan Fox has played his way into the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale with a brilliant performance at the DDF Irish Open.

Capping off the best fortnight of his Professional career, Fox moved from a share of sixth to a share of fourth with a final round 68 at Royal Portstewart Golf Club to claim one of three available berths to the game’s oldest Major.

It was just reward for Fox who had been within a whisker of qualifying at both the Australian Open and last week’s French Open.

At Royal Sydney Aaron Baddeley edged him out courtesy of a higher world ranking while in France Mike Lorenzo Vera and Alexander Bjork’s 72^nd hole birdies pushed him out.

"I’m ecstatic," he told the European Tour website. "Third time lucky, I just missed out last week in France and I missed out on World Rankings at the Australian Open at the start of The Open Qualifying Series so I’m very, very happy to get the job done this week.

"It was a great golf course this week and a lot of fun to play. I’m sure Birkdale might play a bit tougher than what we’ve got this week.

“I haven’t played a lot of links golf in my career, I managed to play an Open at St Andrews a couple of years ago and I loved the experience of playing links golf.

“I’m looking forward to the opportunity again."

It will be Fox’s second major appearance, his first coming at The Open at St Andrews in 2015 where he finished T49.

While The Open berth was uppermost in his mind Fox also cashed the biggest cheque of his career, the €240,672 surpassing the €218,574 he earned for finishing outright sixth last week.

He has also now moved inside the top-30 on the season long Race to Dubai and is guaranteed to play the lucrative Finals Series at the end of the year.

Fox began the final round T6 alongside Scott Hend whose Saturday 64 equaled the Portstewart course record but the Queenslander couldn’t maintain the momentum Sunday with two double bogeys in his first nine holes.

An eventual 73 saw him slip to T20 while Wade Ormsby moved the other direction, a Sunday 68 seeing him into T14.

Andrew Dodt matched Hend’s 12-under total for a share of 20^th while Marcus Fraser (T36) and Sam Brazel (T62) were the last of the Australians to make the cut.

Jason Scrivener and Brett Rumford both struggled in the opening two rounds and missed the weekend’s play.