GUIDONIA MONTECELIO, Italy – When it comes to the hype that’s surrounded Ludvig Aberg in recent months, Rory McIlroy hasn’t been insulated from it. For the longest time, though, McIlroy had never seen the highly touted Swede up close and personal.
That changed a couple weeks ago as all 12 members of the European Ryder Cup team jetted over to Rome to get an early look at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club. And as Aberg, a Captain’s pick not even four months into his professional career, strolled onto the first tee for his practice round that Monday, McIlroy greeted him with a wide grin.
“I’ve been looking forward to this for a while,” McIlroy said to Aberg.
Aberg did not disappoint, either.
McIlroy’s expectations for the 23-year-old former top-ranked amateur were already high, but Aberg exceeded them with his clinical play off the tee, a rare combination of power and accuracy. The ball-striking, as McIlroy put it, was incredible, but so, too, was Aberg’s ability to control the trajectories of his shorter clubs.
“I was on the bandwagon before,” McIlroy added. “I’m certainly at the front of it now.”
Aberg’s rapid ascent to the sport’s pinnacle is no easy feat. In fact, Aberg’s inclusion this week as one of Captain Luke Donald’s six picks will make Aberg the first player ever to play in a Ryder Cup being even teeing it up in a major championship.
In early June, Aberg was wrapping up a decorate four-year career at Texas Tech by playing in the NCAA Championship and sweeping college golf’s trio of player-of-the-year honors.
Now, he’s just days away from debuting in what is largely expected to be the first of many – or as Donald has predicted, “the next eight” – Ryder Cups.
“His pedigree is just starting,” Donald said. “He’s just getting on his road. He’s just starting to write his history. I think he’s a generational talent.”
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BORN IN ESLOV, A TOWN of about 20,000 people on the southern tip of Sweden, Aberg originally gravitated toward soccer. Skilled with his feet, multi-positional and a massive Liverpool fan, Aberg’s friends joke that the only thing that could get Aberg to quit golf now is if The Reds offered him a contract. As a kid, Aberg’s dad, Johan, would entice him to spend most of his time on the golf course by bribing his only son with ice cream.
Aberg was an easy kid to raise otherwise, mature beyond his years thanks to going through primary school with peers mostly a year older than him. Aberg took a gap year before enrolling in Riksidrottsgymnasium Helsingborg, a prestigious boarding school for elite athletes that has produced such pro golfers as Alex Noren, David Lingmerth, Pernilla Lindberg and Madelene Sagstrom, as well as two current Solheim Cuppers in Aberg’s class, Linn Grant and Maja Stark.
There’s a story out there that compares Aberg to Michael Jordan, who was famously cut from the varsity basketball team as a sophomore at Laney High. But Aberg’s instructor, Hans Larsson, calls that a stretch; Aberg’s gap year wasn’t because he didn’t have the credentials to attend Riksidrottsgymnasium, which is partially funded by the Swedish Golf Federation, but rather he wanted to reclassify with kids his own age.
“It wasn’t because of us not picking him,” Larsson said, chuckling.
Larsson still remembers when a 15-year-old Aberg first arrived at the school, unassuming and certainly not screaming future world No. 1 amateur and Ryder Cupper. He wasn’t too keen on working out as a freshman, and he usually spent more time on the golf course than the driving range. But what Larsson did notice were Aberg’s easy movement with his golf swing and his chill temperament. When his classmates were acting out, Aberg stayed out of trouble.
“Ludvig was such an easy guy to have around,” Larsson said. “Someone recently asked me, ‘Well, when did you have to tell him off?’ I did not tell him off in four years. He did not act like other junior guys, screaming and shouting and swearing, and throwing clubs. … He was always bringing so much joy. He laughs all the time.
“Who he is now is who he was back at our school.”
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BY HIS THIRD YEAR OF high school, Aberg had no issues standing out. He won the Fairhaven Trophy as a junior in 2017 and notched several top-10s in AJGA invitationals prior to his arrival in Lubbock, Texas, in Fall 2019.
When Aberg finally stepped on campus, Texas Tech head coach Greg Sands could immediately tell his prized recruit was special. So could rival coaches.
“Almost the Megatron of who you would want [in a golfer], that’s kind of what he looks like,” Oklahoma head coach Ryan Hybl told Golf Channel earlier this year.
Sands had another nickname for Aberg: “Ken.”
“He could do no wrong,” Sands said recently in a Daily Mail interview. “Good-looking guy, practices all the time, never causes you one minute of trouble. Ken.”
Instead of a dream house, though, it was a dream college career for Aberg, who won the Sun Bowl All-America Classic as a freshman and then back-to-back Nordic Pro League events the summer after the pandemic cut his debut season short. In total, Aberg racked up nine college wins, including each of the past two Big 12 individual titles. He also captured the Jones Cup, a top amateur event, in 2021.
The legend of Ludde, his more common nickname, has grown exponentially since the start of the year. On his way to earning the first PGA Tour card in the history of the PGA Tour University program, Aberg teed it up at the DP World Tour’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic, where he was paired with European Ryder Cup Vice Captain Edoardo Molinari for each of the first two rounds.
Aberg made the cut, and Molinari reported back to Donald, “We need to keep an eye on this guy.”
Donald listened, but even then, as Donald admitted Monday at Marco Simone, Aberg was a “longshot” to make Donald’s team this year.
Aberg turned pro in early June and immediately rattled off top-25s at the RBC Canadian Open and the Travelers Championship. He then drew a pairing alongside Donald for 36 holes in Detroit and opened that event in 65-67, officially putting the European Captain on notice.
“Pretty impressive when he knew I was watching him,” Donald said. “He seemed to be very unfazed. … When you play with certain players, you can tell. They have a certain talent that you see them hit golf balls and you’re blown away, just by the different strike, the sound, the trajectory.”
As the summer wore on, Aberg climbed Donald’s list of preferred options by answering nearly every bell, none bigger than his DPWT fortnight just weeks before Donald was to finalize his squad. As he headed to Europe for the D+D Real Czech Masters and Omega European Masters amid a heavy cloud of scrutiny, Aberg had a phone conversation with Donald.
“He knew what was on the line after that,” Larsson said. “He knew if he played well, he was on that team.”
Aberg tied for fourth and then won in Switzerland on the eve of the big captain’s picks reveal to solidify his spot alongside fellow picks Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry, Sepp Straka and Nicolai Hojgaard.
“I felt like I’ve done a pretty good job of not thinking about it too much,” Aberg said at that announcement. “I feel like it’s always been there, and it’s always been a motivation for me, obviously growing up in Europe and in Sweden, you want to be part of these teams at some point during your career, but I didn’t realize this was going to be this quickly.”
Aberg’s fast lane has seen him, in basically one year, go from teeing it up in the Inverness Intercollegiate to teaming with McIlroy and Europe’s best in Rome.
Larsson credits a May update to PGA Tour U’s perks that afforded an extra year of PGA Tour membership to the top points finisher for giving Aberg the freedom to chase this Ryder Cup. He didn’t have to worry about catching lightning in a bottle in limited starts, or risk having to go to Q-School this fall. He could add a DPWT card and split time between tours, and at a minimum he’d be able to count on full PGA Tour status for 2024.
“I told him before he turned pro, ‘Ryder Cup is within your reach,’” Larsson said. “And he’s proven it.”
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PETER HANSON PLAYED ON A pair of winning European Ryder Cup teams. Now 45 years old and retired from playing, he’s assumed a second career mentoring top Swedish talent, including Aberg.
Hanson’s role, he says, is to guide Aberg “through the minefield of going from amateur golf to professional golf.” But he adds, “It’s been quite easy.”
Stats guru Justin Ray tweeted after the Tour Championship in late August that since Aberg turned pro, no player had outgained him in strokes gained: off-the-tee – McIlroy was second. (Aberg then went out at the BMW PGA, the DPWT’s flagship event at Wentworth, and beat McIlroy and Viktor Hovland by a combined 14 shots over two days of being grouped together.)
For Aberg’s last two years of college, Larsson and Aberg agreed that Aberg would play ultra-aggressively off the tee, hitting driver when most other players would opt for less club. With Marco Simone likely being tightened to the extreme in hopes of punishing the Americans, Aberg, who according to PGATour.com’s Sean Martin is the only player who’s averaged at least 315 yards off the tee and hit at least 60% of his fairways this season on Tour, figures to have an ace in the hole in the big stick. (He also practiced at claustrophobic Valderrama last week in Spain.)
Some would argue he may already possess the whole deck.
“You know, as coaches we always want to have an effect on a player,” Sands also told the Daily Mail, “but with Ludvig, I just have to downplay that, because, well, with him, God put together the perfect human being for golf.”
The Ryder Cup, however, has given even the icons of the game fits. There’s a reason that Tiger Woods holds a 13-21-3 career individual record in the biennial event.
“The first tee at the Ryder Cup,” Hanson said, “is going to be 50 times more pressure than it was playing with Rory and Viktor at Wentworth.”
Added Jon Rahm: “When you’re creating the kind of reaction Ludvig has, it’s a good thing because clearly people see the potential you have. He’s already played good enough to capture the attention of the best players in the world and the media. … The only thing that matters is what’s going on in his head. A lot of times as players we put a lot more pressure on ourselves than the media can put on us.”
Can Aberg, mature since practically birth, continue to crush the pressure? Can he, like so many European fans expect, deliver for his continent in the biggest of arenas?
Or will the rookie finally show some nerves?
“It’s another chapter within a couple weeks, and he’s in the spotlight even more,” Hanson said. “But it seems the more you shine the light on him, the better he gets.”
And that’s why Hanson’s advice to his pupil this week has been simple:
“Try to give your crowds your big smile. When you give the crowd the energy and the love, they’ll love you back.”
That bandwagon, the one McIlroy is now pulling, is already pretty heavy.
