How Jason Day hit this miraculous 6-iron bunker shot at the Japan Skins match

The Challenge: Japan Skins is officially in the books, and by all accounts, it went rather well. Jason Day walked away the victor with a $210,000 haul, followed by Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods at $60,000, and Hideki Matsuyama rounding-out the match at $20,000. But when we look back on the event, there’ll be one shot that stands out above all the others: Jason Day’s 6-iron bunker shot that helped him save par.

It came on the 525-yard par-5 14th hole, the site of the one-club challenge, where the FedEx Cares foundation donates $100,000 in the name of the winner (or winners) to charity. Day went with a 6-iron. He hit three of them, only to end up in the greenside bunker. Needing to get up and down to save par and stay alive in the skin, he hit a miraculous shot to a few feet that helped him do just that.

How’d he do it?

The TaylorMade p760 6-iron Day’s using has a loft of about 29 degrees — about half that of an ordinary lob wedge — so you can see the first thing Day does is open the face way up, so it points towards the sky.

At the same time, Day gets very low to the ground to help the club slide underneath the ball.

Setup is important, but the really important part of this shot is to maintain both of those things through the shot. Day does that beautifully. You can see how much knee flex he has at impact, which is why the club slides neatly under the ball.

And he keeps the clubface open long after the ball is gone, well into his follow through.

A truly masterful shot, which you can watch in full below.

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