RORY McILROY went just inches from a stunning hole-in-one on a 305-yard par four - and didn't even need his driver.
The Northern Irishman, 29, opted for a two iron to attack his tenth hole - the course's first - at the WGC-Mexico Championship yesterday.
And he took the fairway, bunkers and trees out of the equation by aiming straight for the pin.
Remarkably, his shot had enough power and left-to-right fade on it to not only reach the green but roll justpast the hole.
The world No8 made no mistake with his six-foot putt as he was forced to settle for an eagle.
That gave McIlroy a two-shot lead at the top of the leaderboard at Club de Golf Chapultepec, near Mexico City.
He finished on eight under par but his lead was cut to just one by the time the first round was completed, with Dustin Johnson right on his tail.
After a round which included seven birdies as well as the phenomenal eagle, McIlroy said: "I hit a lot of good shots, I left myself a lot of tap-ins for birdies and had a nice eagle on the first hole as well.
"If I'm excited about anything in my game, it's the way I've putted the last few weeks.
"Also my attitude. I'm not putting myself under any pressure, I've got things in a really nice perspective.
"I think that's probably 80 per cent of the reason why I'm playing good golf over the first few weeks of the year."
The PGA Tour tweeted out the video of the incredible shot and unsurprisingly fans could scarcely believe what they had witnessed.
Josh McMillan joked that it was "easy".
Another asked: "Is the instructions for this in the golf pass?"
Howard Jones said: "That's a new level of power."
Twitter user @Ph9072 could not work out what to make of the shot. They said: "I don't know if this motivates me to get better, or give up. Wow."
But Tim Swindle summed up what we were all thinking. He tweeted: "That dont make no sense."