The Masters Tournament Par-3 contest is a

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

competition that precedes the

Masters Tournament The Masters Tournament (usually referred to as simply The Masters, or the U.S. Masters outside North America) is one of the four major championships in professional golf. Scheduled for the first full week of April, the Masters is the first ma ...

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. The first Par-3 contest was held before the

1960 It is also known as the "Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism. Events January * Ja ...

tournament, and was won by three-time Masters champion

Sam Snead Samuel Jackson Snead (pronounced English_phonology">sni:d.html" ;"title="English_phonology.html" ;"title="nowiki/>English phonology">sni:d">English_phonology.html" ;"title="nowiki/>English phonology">sni:d May 27, 1912 – May 23, 2002) was an ...

. The contest takes place in a single round on a nine-hole, par-27 course in the northeast corner of the club's grounds, designed in 1958 by George Cobb and club founder Clifford Roberts. Traditionally, the contest participants have invited family members to

caddie In golf, a caddie (or caddy) is the person who carries a player's bag and clubs, and gives the player advice and moral support. Description A good caddie is aware of the challenges and obstacles of the golf course being played, along with the ...

for them, sometimes allowing them to play shots on their behalf. Through the 2019 contest, ninety-four holes in one have been recorded, including nine in the 2016 event. Snead became the contest's first multiple winner in 1974, fourteen years after his first. The most recent is Tom Watson, who won his second Par-3 contest in 2018, 36 years after his first in 1982.

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is the only one with three wins; he won his first pair in consecutive years (2003, 2004), as did

Sandy Lyle Alexander Walter Barr Lyle (born 9 February 1958) is a Scottish professional golfer. Lyle has won two major championships during his career. Along with Nick Faldo and Ian Woosnam, he became one of Britain's top golfers during the 1980s. He spe ...

(1997, 1998). Seven players have multiple wins; the other three are

Isao Aoki is a Japanese professional golfer. He was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2004. Career Aoki was born in Abiko, Chiba, Japan. He was introduced to golf while caddying at the Abiko Golf Club as a schoolboy. He turned professional in 196 ...

, Jay Haas, and

David Toms David Wayne Toms (born January 4, 1967) is an American professional golfer who currently plays on the PGA Tour Champions. From 1992 to 2017, Toms was a member of the PGA Tour, where he won 13 events, including one major, the 2001 PGA Championship ...

Jimmy Walker James John Walker (June 19, 1881November 18, 1946), known colloquially as Beau James, was mayor of New York City from 1926 to 1932. A flamboyant politician, he was a liberal Democrat and part of the powerful Tammany Hall machine. He was forced t ...

holds the course record of 19 (–8), set in 2016, which included an ace. The contest has been decided by a playoff on 21 occasions, and concluded with a tie twice. Just 14 of the 59 winners (including ties) are non-American. No winner of the Par-3 contest has gone on to win the Masters in the

Winners

:Key
:* - playoff
: - tie
:(a) - amateur

Masters champions who also won a Par-3 contest

*No player has won the Par-3 contest and the Masters in the same year, a fact well known by the players.
Raymond Floyd came the closest in the 1990 tournament, but lost in a sudden-death playoff. *Ben Crenshaw and Vijay Singh are the only players to win a Masters after winning a Par-3 contest. *Tom Watson is the only player to hold both titles at once, for four days, winning the Par-3 contest in 1982 as defending Masters champion.

Notes

* Par is a predetermined number of strokes that a golfer should require to complete a hole, a round (the sum of the total pars of the played holes), or a tournament (the sum of the total pars of each round). E stands for even, which means the round was completed in the predetermined number of strokes.

References

External links

About Golf
nbsp;– The Masters Par-3 Contest winners {{featured list Par-3 contest 1960 establishments in the United States