The four-times major champion and former world number one has struggled with short putts for more than a year, but he felt earlier this season that he had overcome what golfers refer to as the yips.
But his short-putt troubles returned in nightmarish fashion after Els' third shot, a chip, came to rest just shy of three feet from the cup at the opening hole.
"A lot of people have stopped playing the game, it's unexplainable," Els said after carding an eight-over-par 80. "I couldn't get the putter back.
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"I was standing there, I've got a three-footer, I've made thousands of three-footers and I just couldn't take it back."
The 46-year-old South African went back and forth missing putts of similar distances. When his effort for double bogey missed left, his playing competitor, world number one Jason Day, turned away.
"It's the first time ever I've seen anything like that," Day said. "I feel for Ernie.
"I feel like I'm pretty good mates with him, being on past Presidents Cup teams and I've known him for a long time now. I didn't realise he was fighting stuff like that upstairs with the putter. But it's painful for players to go through that."
Els tried to gather himself before his putt for triple bogey. He grinned as he stood behind his ball, stepped up and missed again. He one-handed and missed his fifth attempt before tapping in for a nine.
He also missed short par putts at 17 and 18 to end the round a distant 14 strokes off the pace.
"I don't know how I stayed out there," Els said. "But you love the game and you got to have respect for the (Masters) 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. It's very difficult."
The previous Masters high score on Augusta National's opening hole was eight, recorded by Olin Browne and Scott Simpson in 1998 and matched in 2001 by the late Billy Casper, who was 69 at the time, and India's Jeev Milkha Singh in 2007.
(Editing by Larry Fine/Mark Lamport-Stokes)
