WATCH: Aaron Rai beats Justin Thomas, other PGA Tour stars at the 2024 Hero Shot

Modified Dec 04, 2024 11:16 GMT

Aaron Rai beats Justin Thomas, other PGA Tour stars at the 2024 Hero Shot (Images via Imagn and @TGRLiveEvents/X)

Aaron Rai has won the 2024 Hero Shot at Albany beating Justin Thomas, Akshay Bhatia and Jason Day. In the golf contest played ahead of the main tournament, the players tried to hit a floating target set up in the water, 87 yards away from the tee box behind the 18th green.

There were three scoring zones in the contest. If the players reach the outer ring, they get 250 points while if they hit the inner circle and bullseye, they get 500 and 1000 points, respectively. The person reaching the bullseye also received an automatic advancement to the next round.

In the first round, each player got six shots. Akshay Bhatia advanced to the second round with a bullseye while Aaron Rai and Jason Day scored 4,000 points each to advance. Nick Dunlap fell short by 500 points to advance to the second round.

In the second round, Rai advanced comfortably after scoring 4,000 points. Meanwhile, Bhatia and Day tied with 3,000 points. Day advanced after hitting a closer shot than Bhatia in the sudden-death playoff.

In the final round, Rai won the 2024 Hero Shot by two shots on target, better than Day's single successful shot. After winning the challenge, he said:

"It feels really cool, the most nerve-wracking thing I've ever done, I've never done before. The most nerve-wracking part about it was hitting shots in front of Tiger, that part was really good too and obviously to hit good shots it's a win."

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Rai will tee off with Matthieu Pavon at 10:46 AM EST on Thursday, December 5, at the 2024 Hero World Challenge.

A look at Aaron Rai's performance in 2024

Aaron Rai has had a great 2024 season. In 25 starts on the PGA Tour, he made 21 cuts and had one win, one runner-up, six top-10 and 13 top-25 finishes. He finished 23rd in the FedExCup standings.

Rai won his first PGA Tour event after turning professional in 2012 at the 2024 Wyndham Championship. He won the tournament by two strokes over Max Greyserman. He finished as a runner-up at the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

Rai's other notable finishes include a T4 at THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson, a T4 at Genesis Scottish Open and a T7 at John Deere Classic. He also finished 67th in the Race to Dubai rankings with his best performance at the BMW PGA Championship where he tied for fourth.

Let's take a look at Aaron Rai's performances in the 2024 season:

2024 PGA TOUR Tournaments