AR
By Kent Gray
Josh Hill needed a final-hole birdie to win the 2019 Abu Dhabi Amateur Championship by a stroke from his pal Arjun Gupta and subsequently become the youngest player to tee it up in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.
It was a fittingly dramatic finish to the second edition of the WAGR-sanctioned event but not half as clutch as the wild par the 17-year-old conjured up on Thursday to capture the 54-hole title for a second time in three years and book his return to the $8 million DP World Tour event next month.
It was all tied up at -9 with Denmark’s Frederick Birkelund heading down the last at Saadiyat Beach Golf Club when Hill’s title hopes seemed lost courtesy of a tugged drive left that his father Russell described as “…so wide and dead”.
And then the Trump International Golf Club, Dubai member produced this miraculous recovery shot from the desert. Check. It. Out. (we suggest going to full-screen mode and urge you to wait for the ball to emerge, seemingly from thin air) :
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Anyone who has ever played golf in the UAE knows how difficult shots are from wasteland, much less from the particularly gnarly lie that confronted Hill. And don’t forget all that wetness beyond that demanded absolute pin-point accuracy. Russell Hill provided a proud father commentary on his Instagram feed.
“Josh hit one of the most incredible golf shots I have ever seen today, SEVE Would have been proud of it himself,” Hill Snr wrote.
“Was tied for the lead going up the last hole, from the tee he left himself so wide and dead, he was in the desert behind a grass lump had about 25 yards to clear, of desert, cart path and rough and he had to land it in the fringe on a knuckle. If it landed left side it would have gone 15 yards away from the hole, to far right it would have kicked into the water and if to long it could have been wet… he landed it in a foot window and it rolled past the hole to eight foot, absolutely friggin stunning! It was so clutch it won him the title!”
Indeed, while Birkelund bogeyed, Hill two-putted for par to sign for a closing 72 to go with earlier rounds of 66-69 and a championship-winning 207 aggregate. His -9 total edged the Dane by a stroke with India’s Yash Majmudar third on 210 while Dubai-based Welsh international Toby Bishop and Victor Svendsen (DEN) finished T-4 a shot further back.
The victory sets up a third DP World Tour (formerly European Tour) start for Hill who will rub shoulders with the likes of Collin Morikawa and Rory McIlroy at the 17th Abu Dhabi Championship, a Rolex Series event to be hosted by Yas Links Abu Dhabi for the first time from Jan.20-23.
Hill has coincidently finished T-117 in both his previous DP World Tour starts, carding rounds of 74-76 around Abu Dhabi Golf Club’s National layout in 2020, a week before a pair of 77s also saw him miss the cut at the Dubai Desert Classic. He earned the invite to ‘Major of the Middle East’ after topping the MENA Tour’s amateur Journey to Jordan OOM title during a stellar 2019. Hill became the youngest winner of an Official World Golf Ranking event that season when he captured the MENA Tour’s Al Ain Open and has since gone on to gain selection to the senior England amateur team for the coveted Home Internationals.
