Masters: Ernie gets a bad case of the yips

The 46-year-old South African nicknamed "The Big Easy" found nothing simple at all on the 445-yard hole named Tea Olive, time and again unable to sink short putts.

"I can't explain it. I'm not sure what I did," Els said. "I don't know how I stayed out there. But you love the game and you've got to have respect for the tournament and so forth. But it's unexplainable.

"It's very tough to tell you what goes through your mind. It's the last thing that you want to do is do that on a golf course at this level. So, it's very difficult.

"I'm not sure where I'm going from here. I don't know. We'll see."

Els six-putted the par-4 opening hole to open his 22nd Masters appearance, his nine-shot agony one stroke worse than the prior highest score on the hole, the eights shot by Olin Browne and Scott Simpson in 1998, Billy Casper in 2001 and India's Jeev Milkha Singh in 2007.

"I couldn't putt with a stick," Els said. "You make some stuff up in your brain. It's difficult. It's something that holds you back from doing your normal thing. I don't know what it is. I can go to that putting green now and make 20 straight 3-footers. And then you get on the course and you feel a little different and you can't do what you normally do. So it's pretty difficult.

"Hopefully I can pull it back and play some decent golf."

His total on the opening hole was originally scored as a 10 by running scorekeepers, but Augusta National announced after Els completed his round that the score had been "incorrectly recorded" and should have been a nine.

Even Els admitted he couldn't keep track of the humbling misery as it unfolded miss after miss, swatting putts from inside two feet that failed to fall time and again.

"I can't explain it," Els said. "I couldn't get the putter back. I was standing there. I've got a 3-footer. I've made thousands of 3-footers and I just couldn't take it back.

"And then I just kind of lost count after. I mean, the whole day was a grind."

'I tried to fight' -Els finished with a eight-over 80 to share 81st in a field of 89. He birdied the fifth and par-5 13th but took double bogey at 11 and closed with back-to-back bogeys.

"I tried to fight," Els said. "I'm hitting the ball half decent and I can't make it from two feet. I missed from two feet on 18 and a 4-footer on 17. When you count them up, it's too many shots just out there, just on the green."

"From tee to green I'm not bad, but with the putter it was difficult on every hole."

Els fired his first shot of the day into the huge bunker right of the first fairway and sent his approach 18 yards left of the green before pitching to three feet.

Then came the agony, misses from all around the hole. Els finally used a nonchalant one-hand swing to tap the ball back toward the cup and it lipped out, prompting him to reach over and again one-hand the ball, this time mercifully into the bottom of the cup.

WATCH: Ernie gets a bad case of the yips