Rai wins Par‑3 Contest

Aaron Rai won Augusta National’s Par 3 Contest on Wednesday at 6-under 21, and he needed a birdie on the last hole to finish one shot ahead of Jacob Bridgeman and Johnny Keefer. The Par 3 Contest is the nine-hole warmup played the day before the Masters starts, and the 2026 edition was the 64th time Augusta has staged it. Rai is easy to spot because he plays in two gloves, and this was not a runaway win at all. He closed with four straight birdies to get to 21 shots on a par-27 course, which is like finishing a sprint with your fastest lap. The day turned rowdy because four different players made holes-in-one: Justin Thomas, Wyndham Clark, Keegan Bradley, and Tommy Fleetwood. Last year’s contest had three aces, so Wednesday topped that total before the main tournament even began. That still sits well below the event’s wildest ace day. In 2016, the Par 3 Contest produced nine holes-in-one, which remains the record. The strange part of winning this thing is that it comes with a superstition nobody wants. No Par 3 Contest winner has ever gone on to win the Masters in the same year, so Rai left Wednesday with a trophy and a piece of golf folklore attached to him. That superstition is one reason the contest feels half serious and half family picnic. Players often bring wives, children, and parents onto the course as caddies, and the afternoon is built as much around photos and laughs as around scorecards. Rai is not one of the betting favorites for the Masters, and Yahoo listed him at +20000 after the Par 3 finish. That made Wednesday feel less like a coronation and more like a sharp little jolt of confidence before Augusta’s real test begins on Thursday. So the first winner of Masters week was a two-gloved Englishman who needed a late burst just to edge two chasers by one shot. By Thursday morning, the score resets to even par, the course stretches from a 1,060-yard par-3 layout to Augusta National’s full major setup, and the folklore around the Wednesday winner starts following Rai around.