By Ryan Herrington
It will go down as a T-2 for Jason Day at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, another solid finish as the Australian continues an impressive start to 2018 after winning at the Farmers Insurance Open two weeks ago. But just how Day scraped it into the clubhouse on Sunday at Pebble Beach—making an all-world par 5 on the home hole—is worth a pat on the back as well as a second look.

Day teed off at 14 under, three strokes back of Ted Potter Jr., fully aware he needed an eagle 3 to put some pressure on the leader. A good driver put him in position to hit another driver with his second shot in hopes to get home in 2; give him credit for having the guts to go for it rather than playing safe.

Unfortunately for Day, though, he tugged the approach, the ball flying into the hazard left of the green. It certainly looked dunzo given how fast his golf ball whizzed by the score board behind the green.

Except, somehow, the thing stayed dry, landing on pebbles and giving Day a playable third shot (except for the fact he couldn’t ground his club).

Ryan Young/Getty Images
Jason Day plays from the beach on the 18th hole during the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

So Day plays on, birdie still in his sights, only to hit this one too hard as well, the ball going over the green into a front bunker. Potter, meanwhile, is waiting back in the fairway, his lead feeling more comfortable but his mind no doubt anxious to get this thing in the books. So what the hell is J-Day doing up ahead?

Maybe Day is thinking the same thing, as he plays his fourth shot on to the green, leaving himself a nearly 17-foot putt. But lo and behold, Day rolls in the par try. So he didn’t make eagle, but the par keeps him T-2 … and will let him tell a good story about the wildest par-save we’ve seen on the 18th in a while.

Here it is again:

That was one adventurous par.#QuickHits pic.twitter.com/mpTzAUdYW7

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 11, 2018

The post Watch Jason Day make a ridiculous par from the pebble beach along Pebble Beach’s 18th hole appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

My essential tips for playing in the Middle East
By Rafa Cabrera-Bello
With Robbie Greenfield

It’s fair to say golf in the Middle East has been pretty good to me over the last few years. I won the Omega Dubai Desert Classic in 2012, contended down the stretch at the Qatar Masters in 2014 and then had my chances in the final group against Henrik Stenson during last year’s DP World Tour Championship. Apart from good putting – which is important wherever you play in the world, for me the keys to playing well in the Middle East are a good driving game, and solid sand play. The courses out here are on the longer side, but the fairways are also fairly generous, which means players who know how to drive it big have a great advantage. And of course, there’s a ton of sand on these courses – and you’ll encounter plenty of different lies. Here, I have some tips for you on how you can improve in both these departments.

 My best driving tips? I find that wanting to hit the ball hard causes people to increase their grip pressure, which means they lose power instead. Most amateurs don’t stand wide enough at set-up with a driver. Your weight shift is like a power engine in the swing, and the wider you stand, the more effective this will be. A nice, relaxed grip and wide stance helps engage the bigger muscles of your back, legs and abdomen. It’s those muscles that you can use to generate arm speed, rather than being very tight with the arms and trying to thrash at the ball.

Light and Wide
For me, the takeaway is driven by my back and chest. This gets me moving everything in-sync. Try gripping way down on the shaft of your driver with the butt of the grip resting against your stomach, and feel like you’re turning everything together.

Launch monitors have told us that the way to maximise our carry distance with a driver is to hit up on the ball. How do you do this? I think the best way is to first ensure that the ball position at address is well forward, to allow your driver room to begin its ascending path. Also, it’s very important you shift your weight onto your right side (for a right-hander) on the backswing.

If you want to go at it really hard, don’t rush it from the top or swing faster straight away. Save that extra energy for the last millisecond before you hit the ball. When you feel like the club is just coming into impact, that’s the time to step on it just that little bit harder.

Downswing Transition
My first move on the downswing is to get my left hip moving away and shift my weight onto the front part of my left foot.

When I picture the type of swing I want to make, the two words that come to mind are wide and elegant.

Adapt your shot to your lie

When you’re playing off hard sand that we see a lot of in the waste areas in the Middle East, or even in some standard bunkers, for full shots the most important adjustment to make is that you grip down on the club in order to strike the ball first.

I swing normal in a bunker, but I alter my stance and weaken the clubface.

If you’re playing a greenside shot from the hard pan, you have to change your technique a little bit. Yes, you still have to use the bounce, but I wouldn’t recommend you open the clubface too much, because you need the club to penetrate the hard sand to avoid thinning the shot. The other difference to a normal bunker shot is that you should be aiming to take a lot less sand. If your standard splash shot enters the sand around two inches behind the ball, here you’re looking to hit maybe as little as half an inch behind it. As a result you need a much shorter swing to control distance, because you have less loft on the club and there’s less sand to cushion the impact.

Rafa Cabrera-Bello is a two-time European Tour winner who claimed the Omega Dubai Desert Classic trophy in 2012.

Photographs by Farooq Salik

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