AUGUSTA, Ga. — Ernie Els was 2 feet from a par to start the Masters.

Twenty-four measly inches.

Then, the unimaginable happened.

One miss. And another. And another. And another. And another.

Finally, on his sixth putt — a one-handed swat that showed his total disgust — Els finished off a quintuple-bogey 9 that essentially ruined any hope of contending for a green jacket on the very first hole Thursday.

Talk about a hard one to take for the Big Easy.

“I can’t explain it,” said Els, who went on to shoot an 8-over 80 that matched his highest score ever at Augusta National and left him a whopping 14 shots behind leader Jordan Spieth. “You’re not able to do what you normally do. It’s unexplainable.”

Els posted the worst score ever at No. 1, a 445-yarder known as “Tea Olive.”

No one at the Masters had ever gone higher than 8 on the par-4 hole.

“I feel bad for Ernie,” said Spieth, the defending Masters champion. “It’s obviously in your head. I’ve certainly had my moments, everybody has, from short range, where they just are not confident in where they are starting it. And on Augusta National’s greens, with the wind blowing, it’s a place you certainly want to be comfortable.”

Making the whole scene downright surreal, none of the putts appeared longer than 4 feet. Els just kept knocking the ball back and forth past the cup, totally bedeviled by not only the slick, treacherous greens at Augusta National, but basically a meltdown in his mental approach.

He missed so many times, the score was initially recorded as a 10 instead of a 9. It was easy to lose count. Even Els wasn’t quite sure how many times he putted.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that,” said Jason Day, who was playing with Els. “You don’t want to see any player go through something like that. It can be sometimes career ending for guys like that if they really are fighting it that much. I just want Ernie to kind of get back to what he used to do, and start playing some good golf again and try to get past this.”