He is 26, in form and has a home game in the Players Championship this week
ORLANDO — Ludvig Åberg didn’t win the Arnie event, but he had a great start to the year, finishing third and closing with a 67 that left him tanned, restless but ready for a home game: the 26-year-old Swedish golfer with his best swing from Byron remains this week’s Course Stadium player from home at Course Stadium. You see Vijay Singh (often) on the range there, and Jay Monahan in the clubhouse. He knows every last hook in the class that will end with a splash.
Well, what’s true for us is true for them: Keeping your golf ball dry is the most important thing on the course once known as TPC Sawgrass. In the unlikely event that Åberg forgets that credo even once asleep-at-the-wheel, his caddy will surely remind him. Åberg’s card, from this year, is Joe Skovron. Yes, the same cool and collected Joe Skovron who bowled Rickie Fowler when Fowler won the 2015 Players. This will be the third Åberg Players. In 2024, as a rookie, he finished T8. Last year, he missed this tradition.
All kinds of position players have won at Ponte Vedra Beach, including Calvin Peete, Lee Janzen, Fred Funk, Tim Clark, Matt Kuchar and Webb Simpson. But let’s not forget the horsepower-laden golfers who won there: Greg Norman, Fred Couples, Davis Love, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Scottie Scheffler. Enter Ludwig — all six-foot-three and 190 pounds of him, in shape and at home.
“It’s a lesson where it’s clear what you have to do but you still have to withdraw it,” he said on Sunday night at Bay Hill. “You have to hit the right shots at the right time. I like to finish: 16, 17, 18. You have to step up and hit the golf shots until you get in.”
A few minutes earlier, he was having a good time, speaking to Swedish TV reporters in Swedish. Every now and then, you heard the English saying: Bay Hill, the Players, a bird here, a bird there. Åberg shot 12 under at Bay Hill, three shots clear of Daniel Berger-Akshay Bhatia, which Bhatia won.
He is not the first Swedish golfer to come to America full of promise and talent. Jesper Parnevik, the son of a Swedish comedian, almost had too much personality to be a consistent competitor on the PGA Tour, but it was fun to watch him play his killer golf. Annika Sorenstam didn’t need great technique to become one of the best women’s golfers of all time – she was relentlessly accurate. Åberg may distinguish the difference between them. He has great power, like Henrik Stenson, but has more greenside finesse. Each of these four golfers speaks incredibly accurate English, as do many European golfers. Sergio Garcia and Jon Rahm express themselves brilliantly, in good times and bad. Seve Ballesteros, in his own way, did, too.
“Sometimes I don’t get the word in English and sometimes I don’t get the word in Swedish,” says Åberg. “It’s a little tricky.” It must be in his head. We can’t see it.
Of course, part of the beauty of golf is that it is an excellent expression of the wordless. In the Masters of 2024, Åberg won the galleries not with a smart reparte with his teammates or under the tree. He did it with his incredible swing, his pace of play, his easy smile at good times and his casual response to unforced errors. Also, he was a new person. Finished 2nd in ’24 and 7th last year.
Speaking of non-verbal communication, Woods paid Åberg a big award at the TGL event last year. Åberg was warm. Woods walked the courts. He stopped, folded his arms across his chest – and watched in silence. It’s not something he usually does. When Åberg won the Genesis Invitational last year, it was Woods who presented him with the trophy.
Åberg was asked if he could feel Woods’ eyes on him, at the TGL event at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
“I miss that,” she said. “It was a scary, stressful time.”
In professional golf, if you feel nervous and stressed, something must be going well. It means that you are alive, you are playing for keeps, you know that there are millions of eyes. If two of them belong to Tiger Woods, well – there’s a stare that speaks volumes.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.
