Par‑3 Contest: fun, fame, four aces
The Masters Par‑3 Contest served up spectacle: Aaron Rai won amid four holes‑in‑one and a heavy celebrity presence that keeps the event social and shareable. (cbssports.com) Scottie Scheffler attended with his 12‑day‑old son Remy, and celebrities like Kevin Hart and Jason Kelce caddied for players — fun pageantry, but the Par‑3 curse still stands (no Par‑3 winner has taken the green jacket the same week). ( )
Aaron Rai finished the Masters Par 3 Contest at 6-under 21 on Wednesday, April 8, and won by one shot over Jacob Bridgeman and Johnny Keefer after birdieing the last two holes. Four players made holes-in-one the same afternoon, which is why a nine-hole warmup round at Augusta suddenly became the loudest show before the real tournament even started. (cbssports.com, golfweek.usatoday.com) The aces came from Justin Thomas on No. 2, Tommy Fleetwood on No. 4, Wyndham Clark on No. 7, and Keegan Bradley on No. 8. Bradley’s shot made him the first player to record a hole-in-one in back-to-back years at the Par 3 Contest. (cbssports.com, sports.yahoo.com) This event is built to look almost nothing like the Masters that starts on Thursday. The Par 3 Contest is played on a separate nine-hole, par-27 course with holes measuring roughly 90 to 155 yards, so players can attack flags instead of protecting scores. (sports.yahoo.com) That design is why the afternoon always looks half golf tournament and half family picnic. Players often let wives, children, or friends hit shots and putts, and once a caddie plays a stroke, the player no longer posts an official score. (sports.yahoo.com, golfweek.usatoday.com) That is how 85 entrants turned into only 17 official scores in 2026. Rai kept his card clean enough to win, while plenty of bigger names treated the round like a practice green with cameras on it. (golfweek.usatoday.com, cbssports.com) Scottie Scheffler turned that family side into the image of the day by walking the course with his wife Meredith, son Bennett, and 12-day-old son Remy. Reuters reported that Scheffler had withdrawn from the Houston Open last month for the birth, then arrived at Augusta saying the newborn was “so young right now” that he sleeps most of the day. (sports.yahoo.com) The celebrity layer was just as deliberate. Kevin Hart wore the white caddie jumpsuit for Bryson DeChambeau, and Jason Kelce took a bag at Augusta as part of ESPN’s on-site coverage of the contest. (golfchannel.com, usnews.com) Tommy Fleetwood’s son Frankie became one of the day’s stars again because he was on the bag when Fleetwood made his ace, and television leaned hard into that father-son moment. ESPN called eight-year-old Frankie the show-stealer even though Rai was the official winner. (espn.com, cbssports.com) The odd part is that winning this contest has never lined up with winning the green jacket four days later. Since the Par 3 Contest began in 1960, no player has won it and then won that year’s Masters, which is why Rai’s prize comes with a joke about bad luck attached. (sports.yahoo.com, sports.yahoo.com) So the Par 3 Contest keeps doing two jobs at once. It gives Augusta National a soft-focus family album on Wednesday, and then it hands Thursday back to the most pressurized golf tournament in America. (cbssports.com, espn.com)
