Ludvig Aberg’s Players collapse exposed flaw he’s been fighting

Ludvig Aberg has a knack for making the game look easy. Like, really easy. A big part of that is his swing, which pairs more firepower than an F1 car with more tempo than Yo-Yo Ma. But it’s also his demeanor: never too high, never too low. “He’s so laid-back, like, ridiculously laid-back,” Rory McIlroy said Sunday as Aberg, the 54-hole leader at the Players Championship, was plotting his way around the Stadium Course.

Aberg’s mellowness, McIlroy added, is “a really good thing, especially in environments like the Ryder Cup.” Those pressure-cooker settings include the majors and, yes, the Players Championship, where Pete Dye’s masterwork can have the same effect on the world’s most skilled golfers that a meat grinder does on three-day-old ribeye. “It’s all about executing,” Aberg said Saturday evening of the Stadium Course’s sundry challenges. “You’re going to get punished if you don’t, which is a fun way to play golf.”

For three and a half rounds, Aberg did just that: he executed. A bogey-free 69 on Thursday. A six-birdie-two-eagle 63 on Friday to seize the lead by two. A what-me-worry 71 on Saturday to extend his lead to three. Another one-under round on Sunday would probably be enough to secure Aberg, who is 26, his third and biggest Tour win.

Whatever the golf gods were cooking up for Players Sunday, Aberg at the very least would be thinking about what winning on so grand a stage might look and feel like, just as he used to do in his college days at Texas Tech and in his early days as a pro. “We spend so much time practicing, playing, training, preparing, so why wouldn’t we think of what it would actually mean to win?” Aberg said Saturday evening. “So naturally that’s what I’m going to do tonight. But does it change anything for me tomorrow? I don’t think so.”

Through Aberg’s first nine holes Sunday, there was little reason to doubt that he wouldn’t keep on keeping on. The only real blip came on the par-4 3rd, where he tugged a 7-wood off the tee into the left rough and made 5, giving back a stroke he’d picked up at the par-5 2nd. Still, after closing the front side with five straight pars and making another at the 10th, Aberg was still in pole position.

Then came the par-5 11th.

After blistering his drive, Aberg didn’t have to think long about whether he’d attack a green guarded short and right by sand and water. Out came the 7-wood, and with it, something you don’t see often from Aberg: a momentary lapse of tempo. Aberg’s ball never had a chance. It started right and stayed right. Splash. He escaped with a bogey, but the loose swing from the fairway might have done more damage to his psyche than it did to his scorecard.

That much became clear on the next tee when Aberg uncorked another clunker: a hard pull into the water that lines the left of the par-4 12th. The misfire left Aberg, after a drop, with 181 yards in from the rough, from where he failed to hold the green. A chip and two putts later, he’d made a double — and, with Cameron Young and Matt Fitzpatrick trading highlights ahead of him, effectively played his way out of contention. For a player who, for 64 holes, had exhibited such mastery over his ball, it was a shocking turn of events.

Aberg’s diagnosis?

“I would imagine if I look at those swings on sort of 11, 12, they probably were quick swings,” he said after he’d signed for a four-over 76 that dropped him to nine under and into a tie for 5th. “Takeaway got really fast and then the rest of it kind of spirals from there. That’s something that I should have been aware of, now looking back. But yeah, that’s the way it goes.”

Aberg also admitted to pressing on 12, where, for a player of his length, he could have taken less club off the tee. Was the aggressive club selection, then, an overcorrection for the gaffe on 11?

“I wouldn’t say so,” he said. “In my opinion, it was probably just a really fast swing. I got really quick on it, and all of a sudden it’s a poor flaw of mine in my golf game. It kind of ties in together with all of it. That’s my learning from those two holes.”

We also learned something else about Aberg this week: for all his even-temperament and seeming unflappableness, he is not impervious to nerves. Far from it. He’s still young. Still maturing. Still dialing in all the elements required to win at the game’s highest level. He showed as much Sunday with two out-of-character swings, and he’d also foreshadowed as much Saturday evening.

“Whenever I get in a stressful situation, I have to slow myself down,” he said. “Because I get really fast, I start talking fast, I start breathing fast, and I kind of get, like, a little worked up like that. So I just have to really calm myself down, try to walk slow, talk slow, make everything just a little bit slower, which is a challenge.”

In some moments more than others.