Blood golfer vying for U.S. scholarship

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Things keep getting better for Mitchell Fox.

After winning the Alberta Junior Golf Championship in July, Fox won the Canadian Junior Boys Golf Championship in August.

Fox is now in the running for a golf scholarship with a major American university.

The Canadian Junior Boys Championship is held by the Royal Canadian Golf Association and was open to male amateur golfers who had not reached their 19th birthday by Aug. 11.

The 17-year-old Fox held off the top junior golfers in Canada to stay consistently low throughout all four rounds of the tournament.

"I was behind up until the end of the third day when I took over the lead," said Fox, who is from the Blood Reserve but currently lives in Okotoks.

Fox started playing golf when he was two years old. His father is a former class A golf professional and Fox has been around golf all his life.

He recently graduated from Foothills Composite high school and is now a student at Mount Royal College in Calgary where he is taking transfer courses in order to get into a university in the United States.

Fox said the signing period for golf scholarships is in November and he hopes to get into either the University of Southern California or Stanford to take a business degree.

Fox prefers to play individual rather than team sports.

"I always like to be competing. I like sports where it just depends on you and you don't have to rely on other people. That is pretty much why I like golf the most out of any of the other sports I have played," he said.

"There are a number of kids out there who can get the ball from point A to point B. You are always going to miss shots, miss greens, miss fairways, miss putts," said Andy Fox, Mitchell Fox's father. "[Mitchell] knows how to manage himself around the golf course, whether he is having a great or not so great day. He is mentally there. He thinks more in the present than he does in the future."

The last major tournament of the year was the Maple Leaf Junior Tour Championship in Banff on Sept. 10. The Maple Leaf Tour is a tour for junior golfers from across Canada.

Fox tied for first place, but lost the title in a count back when play was cancelled on the second day because of rain. A count back was used because a playoff hole was not possible with the weather.

"Golf is a pretty frustrating sport," said Fox. "If you practice hard enough and stuff you can pretty much do anything. It's just how hard you work. Never give up."