AUGUSTA, Ga. >> Nothing like a snowman to put a damper on the party.

Henrik Stenson was one hole from celebrating his 36th birthday as the clubhouse leader at the Masters on Thursday. But that last hole, oh, what a doozy.

Stenson tumbled from the top of the leaderboard with a quadruple-bogey 8 on the par-4 18th. He still finished at 1-under 71, but it may as well have been a 90.

"Finishing with an 8, I don’t think I’ve ever done that," Stenson said.

Stenson’s problems started off the tee, when his drive hooked left and into some bushes. He thought he’d found enough of a gap to get out, but the ball got caught up and landed on some worn and trampled-down pine straw. Rather than take the easy out, he gave it a go with a 4-iron and carved it up the fairway.

His next shot flew the green, and he chunked the chip shot coming back. When he finally got on the green, he missed about a 3-footer for triple-bogey.

"If I would have gotten the second shot out on the fairway, it would have been a different story. That’s normally what happens," Stenson said. "You make a little mistake and then you compound it with another one, and it just keeps on snowballing, and I got the snowman in the end.
"You know, what to do?"

Lee Westwood is the leader at 5-under 67, with Louis Oosthuizen and Peter Hanson at 4-under.

Rory McIlroy shot 1-under 71, Tiger Woods shot even-par 72 and Phil Mickelson was at 2-over 74.