Par‑3 Contest surprise

Aaron Rai needed a birdie on the ninth and final hole Wednesday to win the Masters Par 3 Contest, and he got it, finishing at 6-under on Augusta National’s short course. Four different players also made holes-in-one, which turned a light exhibition into the loudest start of Masters week. (golfchannel.com) (cbssports.com) The Masters Par 3 Contest is a nine-hole event played every Wednesday before the tournament itself, and the course is only 1,060 yards long with a par of 27. It began in 1960, which makes this year’s edition the 64th playing of one of Augusta’s oddest and most relaxed traditions. (espn.com) (wikipedia.org) The whole point is that it looks nothing like the next four days of major championship golf. Players bring wives, children, and friends as caddies, and some of those family members even hit shots, which is why the afternoon can swing from serious golf to total chaos in one tee box. (golfdigest.com) (nbcdfw.com) That setup helps explain why the leaderboard is never the whole story. Justin Thomas made an ace on No. 2, but because players can effectively take themselves out of contention when family members join in and play shots, a highlight reel moment does not always turn into a run at the trophy. (sports.yahoo.com) (golfdigest.com) This year’s four holes-in-one came from Thomas, Wyndham Clark, Keegan Bradley, and Tommy Fleetwood. Bradley’s ace mattered twice, because it made him the first player in Par 3 Contest history to record a hole-in-one in back-to-back years. (golfchannel.com) (sports.yahoo.com) Fleetwood’s ace landed especially well because his son Frankie was back in the middle of the show after becoming a fan favorite at Augusta last year. The Par 3 Contest keeps producing those family cameos, which is why a Wednesday side event gets covered like a real chapter of the tournament instead of a warm-up session. (golfdigest.com) (espn.com) Rai’s win also drops him into the strangest bit of Masters trivia. No player has ever won the Par 3 Contest and then won the Masters in the same week, even though 15 golfers have won both events at some point in their careers. (golfweek.usatoday.com) (nbcdfw.com) That is why Wednesday at Augusta always feels half celebration and half superstition. Rai got the crystal bowl, Bradley got a history line, four players got aces, and by Thursday morning all of them still have to walk onto a different golf course and start over at even par. (sports.yahoo.com) (pgatour.com)