This pitch-in eagle was the highlight of Tony Romo’s first round. Here’s how he did it

Tony Romo made a little bit of noise during the AT&T Byron Nelson on Thursday. He was two-under through eight holes of his first round before a double bogey on 9 brought him back to even-par at the turn en-route to a five-over 76 on the day. But it was his eagle on the 7th hole that grabbed headlines, and for a brief moment, had people dreaming about an unlikely Romo run up the leaderboard.

Let’s break it down.

First, let’s take a look at the technique Romo uses from 60 feet away. It’s textbook technique, simple, and an action players at hime should emulate.

Notice how Romo’s setup and impact positions mirror in frames one and three, and as you can see in frame 4, Romo has kept the angle between his wrists and the shaft but has allowed his torso to turn back and through so his chest faces the target at the finish. By limiting his wrist movement and relying on his bigger muscles to provide the movement, he’s minimizing his potential to make a mistake. There’s not much excess action going on here. It’s effectively a turn back, turn through motion, with minimal wrist action, because there’s no need to help get his ball high in there air, as we’ll see next.

And Romo utilizes this classic technique to perfection. Spotting that he’s got a lot of green to work with, Romo plans to land his ball just a stride or two onto the green, at the top of the slope, and then let it run out toward the hole. No need to hit a flop shot here. And it worked beautifully.

The ball is rolling with some speed as it gets toward the hole, too. It probably helped that the flagstick was in on this occasion. Rather than skipping over the hole as it probably would’ve done, the ball slams into the pin, pops up and drops in.

That’s how Romo did it. You can relive the entire shot below…