Masters Par‑3: Rai wins, four aces

Aaron Rai needed one last birdie at Augusta National’s nine-hole par-3 course, and he got it on the ninth to post 6-under 21 and win by a shot over Jacob Bridgeman and Johnny Keefer on Wednesday. Four different players also made holes-in-one, which turned a warm-up tradition into a full afternoon of crowd noise before the Masters even started. (golfweek.usatoday.com) The Masters Par-3 Contest is not a practice round with a scoreboard tacked on later. It has been part of Masters week since 1960, it is played on a separate par-27 course at Augusta National, and every hole is short enough that players attack pins instead of laying back. (pgatour.com) That setup is why the contest produces shots that look almost cartoonish compared with the main tournament. In 2026 the aces came from Justin Thomas at No. 2, Tommy Fleetwood at No. 4, Wyndham Clark at No. 7, and Keegan Bradley at No. 8. (golfchannel.com) Bradley’s shot carried extra weight because he also made an ace in the Par-3 Contest in 2025. Yahoo Sports reported that no player had ever made a hole-in-one in back-to-back years at this event before Bradley did it on April 8, 2026. (sports.yahoo.com) Fleetwood’s ace landed even harder with the gallery because his son Frankie was on the bag. The Par-3 Contest is the one part of Masters week where children, spouses, and other family members regularly serve as caddies, so a perfect shot can feel more like a backyard memory than a major championship rehearsal. (golfchannel.com, pgatour.com) Rai is an especially neat winner for this event because he does not look casual even when the format is casual. He is known for wearing two gloves during competition, and on Wednesday he still had to make a real closing birdie to separate himself from Bridgeman and Keefer after a tightly packed leaderboard. (golfweek.usatoday.com, theathletic.com) The strange part of winning this thing is that Masters players have spent decades pretending they do not want to. USA Today noted that no player has ever won the Par-3 Contest and the Masters Tournament in the same year, which is why the event comes with a joking “curse” attached to the crystal trophy. (ftw.usatoday.com) That superstition is a little messier than the one-line version. Yahoo Sports pointed out that Ben Crenshaw won the Par-3 Contest in 1987 and later won the Masters in 1995, while Vijay Singh won the Par-3 Contest in 1994 and later won the Masters in 2000, so the “curse” is really about the same week, not the rest of a career. (sports.yahoo.com) So the Wednesday story at Augusta was two things at once: Rai finished off a one-shot win with a last-hole birdie, and the rest of the field turned the place into an ace machine with four one-shot holes. For one afternoon before the first tee shots of the Masters, Augusta’s most controlled week looked loose, loud, and almost family-sized. (golfweek.usatoday.com, golfchannel.com, pgatour.com)