Aldrich Potgieter opened the 2026 Masters with a mess on Thursday morning and never really got it back. The 21-year-old blocked his opening tee shot well right, skulled his pitch over the green and up against a grandstand, then made double bogey on the first hole.
Potgieter steadied himself with three consecutive pars, but the round soon unraveled again. He then went bogey, bogey, double bogey, double bogey in a run that included the Par 4 fifth hole and left him 8-over through eight holes. He added a bogey on No. 11, found the water with his tee shot on the Par 3 12th and carded his fourth double bogey of the day.
The damage mattered because Augusta National gives little room for error, especially around greens where patrons stand close to the action, and Potgieter entered the week as the player leading the PGA Tour in average driving distance this season. That power has not translated into control so far at Augusta, where precision usually decides who survives the first two rounds.
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Potgieter was grouped with Rasmus Neergard-Petersen and Jose Maria Olazabal for the opening two rounds, and the contrast inside that pairing was stark. Olazabal, a 60-year-old two-time Masters champion who is 39 years older than Potgieter, beat him by 10 shots over the opening nine holes and turned in 2-under. Potgieter, by contrast, posted a 44 across his first nine.
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The split screen is the story of Potgieter’s day: the game’s raw power on one side, the course’s old demands on the other. Augusta does not care how far a player hits it when the margin is that thin, and Thursday showed how quickly the Masters can punish even the longest driver in the field.
