There’s using the rules to your advantage, and then there’s using the tournament infrastructure to your advantage. Ewen Ferguson, your 36-hole outright leader at the Dubai Desert Classic, kinda did both Friday.
The 28-year-old Scotsman, who resides in the U.A.E. not far from Emirates Golf Club, is used to playing into the 18th green with nothing surrounding it. The 564-yard par-5 is a bit wonky, requiring less than driver to bend around the corner of a dogleg and then a lengthy shot into the green covering a water hazard. All of which means you’ve got to launch your approach into the sky, carry the water and hope it lands softly.
Unless you’re playing it in the Dubai Desert Classic. Then the 18th green has a crash landing zone that might help.
Among the most beloved tournaments on the DP World Tour schedule, the Dubai Desert Classic tries its hardest to bring spectators as close as possible to the finishing hole … while also offering them some shade from the high temperatures in the Middle East. That just doesn’t make for much room surrounding the shared green of the 9th and 18th holes.
In the instance of Friday’s second round, the hole location was cut deep on the green, just a few paces from the back edge, which is just a few more paces from the rigid grandstand that surrounds the massive green. One stroke back of the lead, Ferguson drew his tee ball into the fairway, leaving 243 yards to the hole.
But it was in the evening and cooling down with a breeze into his face. Ferguson clubbed up to a 3-wood, choked down on the grip a few inches and swung hard, hitting a cut. His ball soared against the iconic Dubai skyline until it clanged into the grandstand behind the green. This being the late stages of the second round, only a smattering of spectators were still on hand to hear it. Certainly none of them saw it. But a few were awfully close to being hit.
The Sky Sports broadcasters were confused what happened. Did the ball strike a sprinkler head? If it hadn’t flown so far, maybe. But this ball flew all the way to the grandstand, smashing enough to create an echo, and then bounced back onto the green, rolling inside five feet.
