Rai wins Par‑3

Aaron Rai opened Masters week by winning the Par 3 Contest at Augusta National with a 6-under 21, and he clinched it with a birdie on his final hole. The score gave Rai a one-shot win over Jacob Bridgeman and Johnny Keefer on the short nine-hole course beside the main tournament layout. (golfweek.usatoday.com) The Par 3 Contest is the Masters’ Wednesday tradition, a lighter, family-heavy event played before the first round begins on Thursday, April 9, 2026. Augusta National staged the 64th edition this week, with players, spouses, children and honorary caddies turning the afternoon into something closer to a spring exhibition than a major championship warmup. (sports.yahoo.com, golfweek.usatoday.com) Rai’s win stood out because the Englishman is better known for precision than spectacle, and the contest rewarded exactly that for nine holes. He played the course in 21 strokes, which on a par of 27 meant six birdies and no room for mistakes if anyone behind him made a late charge. (golfweek.usatoday.com, sportingnews.com) The day’s loudest moments came from four holes-in-one, which is a huge number even for a course made entirely of short holes. Justin Thomas made the first ace at the second hole, Tommy Fleetwood holed out at the fourth, Wyndham Clark aced the seventh, and Keegan Bradley added another at the eighth. (sports.yahoo.com, golfchannel.com, cbssports.com) Those aces are part of what keeps the Par 3 Contest relevant even though it does not count toward the Masters field or the tournament score. The course is short enough to invite aggressive shots, but the green complexes and slopes are still Augusta, so the event produces a mix of serious shotmaking and made-for-television chaos. (sports.yahoo.com, golfchannel.com) It also carries one of golf’s favorite pieces of folklore: no player has ever won the Par 3 Contest and then won the Masters in the same year. That odd streak survived another April afternoon on April 8, 2026, which means Rai now arrives at the year’s first major with a trophy in hand and a superstition hanging over him. (sports.yahoo.com, golfweek.usatoday.com) The curse is specific to winning both in the same week, not to winning both events at any point in a career. Yahoo Sports noted that Ben Crenshaw won the Par 3 Contest in 1987 and the Masters in 1995, while Vijay Singh won the Par 3 Contest in 1994 and the Masters in 2000, which is why the superstition survives as a same-year stat rather than an absolute ban. (sports.yahoo.com) That is what makes the contest such a strange curtain-raiser. It is playful enough for children to carry bags and run across greens, but its winner is instantly folded into one of the most repeated bits of Masters trivia. (golfchannel.com, espn.com) For Rai, the result was still the kind of start players want at Augusta: clean swings, a trophy, and his name attached to the first headline of the week. If he plays well when the Masters begins on Thursday, April 9, the conversation will shift from a charming side event to whether he can become the first man to beat the Par 3 omen. (golfweek.usatoday.com, sports.yahoo.com)