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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.”

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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.

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Sunday at TPC Sawgrass was set up to go one of two ways for Ludvig Aberg. Leading the field by three after 54 holes, the final round was bound to be either coronation or disaster.

The latter happened. And so did Cameron Young.

Young started the final round in solo third and four back of Aberg, but he birdied the iconic par-3 17th to take a share of the lead and then made a tournament-winning par on the 18th to claim his first Players Championship title.

It’s the biggest win of Young’s PGA Tour career and just his second victory overall following his title at the Wyndham Championship last August.

Young closed with a four-under 68, and at 13 under overall he beat Matthew Fitzpatrick by one. Aberg shot 76 and tied for fifth.

“This place has had my number the last few years,” Young said. “I’ve never really had a good finish here. And yeah, it is incredibly taxing. Every shot all day long you can get yourself into trouble. There’s no easy ones. There’s no givens. And you’re going to make mistakes. So it’s a great test of will, a test of patience and obviously a test of hitting some good shots. So I feel like I did a lot of those things really well this week.”

Aberg had a three-shot lead heading into the day over former college teammate Michael Thorbjornsen, but Thorbjornsen ejected from contention with a quadruple-bogey 8 at the par-4 4th hole. Aberg played good but not great golf on the front nine, making one birdie and one bogey to turn in even par and take a two-stroke lead over Ryder Cup teammates Robert MacIntyre and Fitzpatrick with nine to play. Soon Young joined that group at 11 under.

But things changed quickly for the leader on the back nine.

On the par-5 11th, Aberg made his first big mistake of the day, hitting his approach into the water and making bogey. As Aberg missed his par putt, Fitzpatrick, in the pairing ahead, drained his short birdie putt to tie the lead at 12 under. On the next hole, Fitzpatrick stuck it to 4 feet, made birdie and took the solo lead. And on 12 things went officially sideways for Aberg. He drew his tee shot into the water, missed the green with his next shot and made double bogey, dropping three shots in a matter of two holes.

Late in the day it became clear the winner would come from the penultimate pairing of Fitzpatrick and Young, who had to battle not only the Stadium Course’s watery finish but increasingly strong winds.

Fitzpatrick three-putted the 14th from 63 feet to make bogey and share the lead with Young at 12 under, but Fitzpatrick reclaimed the top spot by making a 13-foot birdie on 15.

Fitzpatrick and Young parred 16, and on the iconic par-3 island-green 17th Fitzpatrick played safely to the middle of the green and two-putted for par. Young took the aggressive line, stuck it to 10 feet and rolled in the birdie putt to make it a tie at 13 under with one to play.

“That wind was really difficult, downwind,” Young said. “I just so happened to have the best number you could have possibly asked for. I felt like if I hit just a full hard sand wedge it would carry that bunker by a yard or two, and trying to hit a softer gap wedge would have been a lot more difficult.”

On 18, Young went driver-wedge to 15 feet and made par. Fitzpatrick found the pine straw right of the fairway, had to punch out and then needed to make an 8-footer for par to force a playoff, but it caught the right lip and didn’t fall.

Young walked off the green with $4.5 million — and a winner of the PGA Tour’s biggest tournament.

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As Ludvig Aberg walked up TPC Sawgrass’ 18th fairway on Saturday evening, he scanned a leaderboard and turned to his caddie, Joe Skovron. Up ahead, a final-hole double bogey from Cameron Young had shuffled things around; suddenly there was a new name in second place.

“Looks like we’re playing with Michael tomorrow, which will be fun,” Aberg told Skovron.

That “Michael” is Michael Thorbjornsen, who begins Sunday’s final round at the Players Championship at 10 under par. That’ll put him three strokes off the pace of his playing partner Ludvig Aberg. They’ll go off at 1:40 p.m. local time, the final twosome of the championship. You don’t have to work too hard to find connections between the two. At 26 (Aberg) and 24 (Thorbjornsen), they’re among the Tour’s youngest, brightest stars. They’re also among the tallest, most athletic, hardest-hitting — and most low-key. They both wear Adidas, too. But it’s a particularly interesting pair for two reasons — their past and their present.

Let’s start at the beginning: these two go way back.

“We’ve gone way back to junior golf. We’ve played a lot of college golf together,” Thorbjornsen said after his third round. “I love playing golf with him. He was one of the guys in college that I looked up to, even though he’s only one year older than me.”

In 2023, Aberg, who went to Texas Tech, was the first-ever winner of the PGA Tour University. In 2024, Thorbjornsen, who went to Stanford, became the second.

“At some point when we were both in college it felt like we played every single tournament together,” Aberg said.

Now they’ll add a post-college tournament chapter. But they’ve already played plenty post-college, because they’re practically neighbors. Both Aberg and Thorbjornsen live in this part of north Florida and play TPC Sawgrass with regularity, sometimes together — either at this week’s Stadium Course or the adjacent Dye’s Valley.

“I’m not sure how many people know that I live here,” Thorbjornsen said, pushing back against the idea that he, a native New Englander, would have a local following. “I still play out of Wellesley, Massachusetts, when they announce my name, but I live 15, 20 minutes north from here.”

Aberg, who’s from Sweden, was slightly more bought in to the local-guy narrative.

“In the U.S., this is where I live. This is where I spend all my time when I’m here, when I’m home. So yeah, I spend a lot of time out at TPC practicing, just on a normal Tuesday when I’m home.” Mostly, winning on Sunday would be a big deal because it’s the Players Championship. But it would mean a little something extra because it’s home.”

Both players rave about the event; based on how they’ve played this week, the feeling is mutual.

“Even before I moved here, when I played the event I absolutely loved it,” Aberg said.

“It’s also cool just to play holes 16, 17, 18 — just look at these iconic holes,” Thorbjornsen said. “The whole course is unbelievable.”

There’s subtext to their choice of residence, which represents a shift in the evolving geography of professional golf. An entire generation of pros had been pulled in the direction of Jupiter, Fla., following in the footsteps of Tiger Woods. Other secondary sites have emerged — Scottsdale, Ariz.; Sea Island, Ga.; Dallas, Tx.; among others — but Jupiter is at the center. It’s interesting, then, that two top young pros have settled some five hours up the coast. It’s not random. This is where the PGA Tour is based and it’s home to TPC Sawgrass, whose facilities are fantastic and have only gotten better. They’re also hardly the first; pros from Vijay Singh to Jim Furyk to Fred Funk to Cameron Smith have called this area home. But it is notable that in recent years more and more young pros have gravitated to the area, these two chief among them.

“This course right here,” Thorbjornsen said, explaining his why. “PGA Tour headquarters just off site too, definitely helps out. I know a lot of younger guys coming out of college are kind of moving into the area. So, yeah, it’s a pretty good spot.”

As for Aberg?

“I just liked it. The first time I was here I played a Junior Players in 2018, 2017, and I remember saying then that this is a really nice place, and I knew the golf was really good,” he said. “I enjoy the little bit of seasonal change, not necessarily 85 degrees all year round as it is in South Florida. Then I naturally knew a lot of people here even before I moved. Yeah, at the end of the day, it was a pretty easy decision.”

No matter the stakes of practice rounds or money matches, there’s no way they will have been able to replicate Sunday final-round pressure in front of a sellout crowd. But they’ll at least know their way around the locker room — and around their playing partner.

Aberg has had greater professional success thus far. He’s contended in majors and won Ryder Cups. Thorbjornsen, on the other hand, is hunting his first Tour victory. This would be a good place to start. And the player beside him will know he’s not to be taken lightly.

“He’s a great guy, good player, and he’ll be coming out excited tomorrow to play,” Aberg said. “He’ll be coming out hot and I’m going to have to respond and play some good golf.”

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This article was originally published in a 2025 issue of GOLF Magazine.

WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST WEAKNESS?

It’s my last question of the day for Ludvig Åberg and likely the least original. We’re sitting in the grill room in the clubhouse at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., home course of the PGA Tour and home to its most talented young star, who has recently relocated to Northeast Florida. 

I’ve spent much of the day shadowing Åberg, the 25-year-old Swede and World No. 5, watching him hit balls and take photos, first for his clothing sponsor, Adidas, and then for GOLF, while peppering him with questions in between. We’re still weeks away from Åberg winning the biggest title of his young career, a statement, come-from-behind victory at this year’s Genesis Invitational that proved his competitive fire and calm under pressure. But now that our time together is running out, it occurs to me that I’m missing a key insight into Åberg, a requirement to make any character compelling: his flaw. 

Åberg can’t think of one.

I offer suggestions. Bad temper. Sweet tooth. Trash TV habit. “I mean, I think we all have weaknesses,” he says, charitably but unconvincingly. The rest of us, maybe, I counter. Then there’s a long, drawn-out silence. 

It’s a credit to Åberg (pronounced Oh-berg) that he considers the question earnestly. He lingers so long in thought that I have time to gaze out the window, catch a glimpse of roof tile, come to the realization that this place—this red-domed, 80,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style behemoth of a clubhouse charging $800 green fees to play the island-green golf course—is the polar opposite of the minimalist golfing culture in which Åberg learned the game. But he’s adaptable. His game travels, from small-town Sweden to Lubbock to Augusta and beyond. That’s among his many strengths. As for a weakness? 

“Yeah, that’s a great question,” he says.

IF IT FEELS LIKE ÅBERG IS STILL NEW on the scene, that’s because he is. Two years ago at this time, he was still a student at Texas Tech. Let’s get specific: In May 2023, he won the NCAA Norman Regional in his penultimate college start and just three months later won the Omega European Masters in just his second DP World Tour event as a pro. The DP win doubled as audition; the very next week he was selected for the European Ryder Cup team, a bold but inspired choice by captain Luke Donald. It would mark the first time someone had suited up for a Ryder Cup before he’d competed in a major. 

“I think he’s a generational player,” Donald explained at the time. “If he wasn’t going to play this one, he was going to play the next eight Ryder Cups. That’s how good I think he is.” 

That Ryder Cup week at Marco Simone, just outside of Rome, was Åberg’s introduction to a curious golfing public. Who was this six-foot-three Swede with the athletic move and air of mystery? He hit it far. He hit it close. And he didn’t say any more than he had to. Most of the American team had never seen him play, never mind tried to beat him, but on Saturday morning he delivered a performance to remember. Åberg and Viktor Hovland were put up against the American A-squad of Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka. Less than two hours later, the Team U.S.A. stars walked off the course bewildered, having been handed a 9-and-7 beatdown, the widest margin in Ryder Cup history. 

“Ludvig’s a stud,” said Hovland. “He doesn’t miss a shot.” 

Åberg headed stateside after a victorious Ryder Cup debut and stayed hot through the end of the 2023 PGA Tour season. He finished T2 in Mississippi, T13 in Vegas and T10 in Mexico before winning the final event on the schedule, the RSM Classic, with a preposterous 61-61 weekend. It was a fitting capstone to a wild debut. “I still pinch myself in the morning when I wake up to realize that this is what I do for a job,” Åberg said at the post-tournament presser. “It’s been so much fun.” 

He started 2024 where he’d left off: top 10 at Torrey Pines, runner-up at Pebble, top 10 at the Players. By the time Åberg arrived at the Masters, a course hostile to first-timers, there were only 10 players in the field with shorter odds. By week’s end? He’d beaten everybody except Scheffler. It was the best result by a Masters rookie since 1979. And it left the golf world with two questions: Who is this guy and where did he come from? 

BACK AT SAWGRASS, Åberg says that it’s impossible to tackle the first question without answering the second. The where and the who are intertwined. He’s the product of a specific system, of a specific coach, of a specific school and school of thought—even if it seems counterintuitive that one of the best golfers in the world grew up in a cold-weather country. 

“Don’t go in the winter,” he warns, when asked to describe his native Sweden. “It’s cold. It’s dark. Nobody wants to leave their house.” 

But in the summer? Here, Åberg sounds ready to join the tourism bureau. 

“It’s a beautiful country,” he says. “It doesn’t get too hot, like certain parts of America. It’s just so nice. We have daylight ’til midnight, and everyone’s barbecuing and hanging outside. And because there’s only a few weeks a year where it’s actually nice outside, everyone takes full advantage.” 

Åberg was born on Halloween in 1999 in Eslov, a town of 20,000 in southeast Sweden, which he describes with a loving shrug—when he was a kid, it was voted the most boring city in Sweden. No matter—it had plenty of room for handball and soccer, and it was home to Eslovs Golfklubb, where his dad teed it up and eventually Ludvig did too. 

He describes Swedes as pleasant if standoffish. “They’re very nice, very kind, but they’re also very private. You wouldn’t see people just, like, randomly talking on a bus.” 

Is he that way? “Deep down I am,” he says. “But I’ve gotten a little less that way as the years pass.” 

Still, he found community in a golf culture he describes as open, accessible and rather un-American. “I think we have one private club in all of Sweden,” he says. “Golf is a lot cheaper than it is [in the U.S.], so there’s a lot more availability. You don’t necessarily have to belong to a club; you can show up with your friends and pay and still go play. There’s a culture of playing and of walking. We don’t really do carts at all. And I’d say, in general, there’s less of a drinking culture in Sweden. Over here, it’s a lot more cocktails while you play.” 

Everything in moderation. That’s a theme. 

Åberg’s father, Johan, who sells parts for construction vehicles, was the family’s resident golf nut, but his mother, Mia, a paralegal, spotted her son’s talent and drive early on. When other six- and seven-year-olds were goofing off at early clinics, Ludvig was focused on the task at hand. But, in the years that followed, no one in his life turned any one dial too far.

He played several other sports; soccer was his favorite. But he loved golf and got good at it. To their credit, he says, Sweden’s high school golf academies view multisport athletes favorably. 

“You [develop] more coordination from multiple sports,” Åberg says. “Also, there’s the team aspect. When you’re 10, being in a locker room after you’ve lost is a pretty big lesson to learn.” 

That partly explains how a tall, lanky, athletic, teenage Åberg was accepted at Filbornaskolan, a sports academy and boarding school in the coastal city of Helsingborg. And that, he says, is when everything began to change. 

THE WEEK BEFORE ÅBERG MADE his Ryder Cup debut, five other Swedes represented Team Europe at the Solheim Cup. Åberg knew the two highest-ranked players, Maja Stark and Linn Grant, well. They were in his eight-person class at Filbornaskolan. That’s right—three of the eight, future PGA and LPGA tour stars. 

How is that possible? Hans Larsson is the man to ask. He’s been coaching golf at the school for more than two decades and oversees a program that has produced more than its share of pros. The school is selective across the board; in the golf program, a typical year will feature eight total players, four male and four female, chosen from close to 100 applicants. What makes the staff ’s approach different, Larsson says, is its big-picture approach. That’s why Åberg calls Larsson a “performance coach” rather than a swing coach. And that’s why, nearly a decade after they first met, Larsson remains his close confidant. 

“We’re not just telling them, ‘This is what you should do,’ ” Larsson, phoning from Sweden, says of his students. “We’re obsessed with ‘This is why you should do it.’ I think that relates to all parts of life: nutrition, training, body movement, golf skills.” By Åberg’s recall, their program “didn’t really do high school tournaments.” That’s unthinkable to the American sporting mind; we crown national champions from age six, and the very idea of competitive junior golf conjures images of stressed-out teens grinding for life-or-death pars. But despite running an elite golf program, Larsson’s focus is rarely on cutthroat competition. 

“Our kids compete at an early age,” he says, “but we try to focus on what you can learn through competing rather than just the lowest score. The Swedish system, both at our school and on the national team, is quite focused on educating and getting the players a base of knowledge in order to perform at the next level.”

Larsson has seen enough cautionary tales to fear the alternative. Kids who specialize early do get results early, he says—but then they often burn out faster, quit earlier, get injured more frequently or hit a ceiling.

“I would never tell them to stop playing another sport they love [to focus on] only golf, because I don’t think that’s good in any way,” he says. “I think it’s good [that they] do a lot of different things to prepare their mind and body. That’s better for your system in the long run, even if you don’t get the results as early.” 

When Åberg arrived on campus at Filbornaskolan, his talent stood out. He just wasn’t particularly keen on practice. It’s not that he was anti-practice. He just didn’t really know how. But once Larsson pointed him in the correct direction, the train left the station full steam ahead. Turns out that Åberg had a superpower, and it wasn’t his swing speed. It was his ability to absorb information and commit wholeheartedly to a plan of action. 

“We did this impact drill,” Larsson recalls, “and for the next two years, every time he hit a shot he did that drill. His current backswing drill he has done for four years, every swing. The things he does he has committed to over time. A lot of kids would try something, they’d go play, they might not play well and then they’d abandon that exercise. If there’s good reason  to believe in it, Ludvig sticks to it.”

Åberg makes it sound like a natural progression. Once Larsson taught him how to practice, he implemented the regimen the way a computer might install a software update. 

“I think I’ve always been disciplined,” he says. “I just didn’t know any better. And obviously that made me quite a bit better pretty quickly.” 

ONE WORD COMES UP AGAIN AND AGAIN as Åberg explains his approach: simple. Sometimes simple is Åberg obsessing over his fundamentals: the ball position, the grip, the setup. His swing hasn’t changed much in the decade he’s worked with Larsson. But mastering the little stuff goes a long way. When something is off, it’s usually a little thing. A simple thing. 

Sometimes simple is Åberg describing things that, to mere mortals, are not simple at all. How does he go from hitting a baby fade to hitting one dead straight? “I like to keep it very simple, so it’s all just tweaks in my setup,” he says. 

Other things become simple because Åberg takes action; he simplifies things for his future self. For instance, he and his caddie, Joe Skovron, meet two hours before every tee time to go over pin locations, wind and strategy. 

“It just simplifies things,” Åberg says, “because when we do get to the golf course, it’s like, ‘No, this is what we said we were going to do.’ It takes away all these emotional decisions you make during a round.” Still sitting in the Sawgrass clubhouse, he gestures in the direction of Pete Dye’s Stadium Course. 

“I know when I get to 12, I’m going to hit driver and I’m going to go for it,” he says, “and that just makes things easier, instead of standing on the tee box like, ‘Should I hit 4-iron?’” 

In Åberg’s syntax, simple is synonymous with the clearest course of action. It makes the thinking the rest of us do look messy by comparison. Åberg’s swing looks simple too. That doesn’t mean you could easily adopt either as your own. 

“No matter what I do today, I’m going to do the same thing tomorrow,” he says. “So, no matter if I win or I don’t win today, I’m still going to go out tomorrow and do the same thing.” 

Einstein famously said that the definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple—and he’d never even seen Ludvig Åberg hit a long iron. 

THE EASY WAY OUT IS TO DISMISS ÅBERG as some kind of robotic cyborg. Some of his peers already have. But spend time with him on the range and you’ll see a creative mind at work, not a bot. He speaks with reverence about the nine-window drill he and Larsson have fine-tuned for years, a drill that requires hitting literally every kind of shot—with every club. 

“I’ve been doing it with a 7-wood lately,” he says. 

How do you even hit a low 7-wood? “Exactly,” he says, flashing his increasingly familiar, subtle grin. 

Åberg still prefers playing to practicing, but at every step of the journey he has chosen to love the process. The thing he loves most about the game?

“That’s a massive question,” he says, before delivering his most expansive answer of the day. 

“It’s so simple, but it’s so hard. It’s logical, but it’s hard. And you’re never going to be finished. You’re never going to figure it out. You can think you are, and maybe you think you’ve come a long way, but there’s so much more to learn. There’s always a better score out there, or a better shot. And trying to figure that out is what excites me. On a good day, you can come out to practice and there’s just so much you can do, y’know? It’s never, ‘Oh, I’m done with that.’ That’s what excites me.” 

Given his penchant for strategic thinking, his low-key but unmistakable romanticism about the game and last year’s runner-up finish at the Masters, it’s no surprise that, as Åberg stares down his 2025 season, Georgia is on his mind. After all, beneath its luminously green exterior, Augusta National has a throwback minimalism at its core. The place is simple done right. 

“There’s a lot of differences between Augusta and a normal tournament, but one thing is just so simple: the scoreboards,” Åberg says, referring to ANGC’s iconic, manually operated leaderboards. He remembers walking down No. 10 last year, when, in a dramatic moment in the final round, the leader- board changed, sending the gallery of patrons into a frenzy. 

“I thought that was the coolest thing,” he says. “Nobody’s on their phone [getting] updated. It’s almost like you’re traveling back in time.” 

AT LONG LAST, ÅBERG COMES UP WITH A FLAW.

“I used to be really poor at time management,” he says. “Double-booked every day, supposed to be in three places at the same time. I think I’ve gotten to practice that a lot more.”

Is it really a flaw if he’s already figured it out? Probably not, but at least it’s something. Besides, it’s a skill he’ll need to keep perfecting, like his setup or shot shapes of his 7-wood. 

The messy, complex world is only going to want more of Ludvig Åberg.

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.

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We heard that “March is going to be major.” We listened to Brian Rolapp. We watched hundreds of shots into an island — and more than a few into the water around it. But now we’re down to the Players Championship’s final day, so let’s talk about what we’ve seen and what we’re about to see at TPC Sawgrass, where Ludvig Aberg leads by three. Reviewing and previewing the action are writers Josh Schrock, Dylan Dethier and Nick Piastowski.  

Nick Piastowski: Hey, Josh. Hey, Dylan. I think combined we watched or read somewhere around 30 hours of Players Championship golf on Saturday, so what’s a few more minutes here? Question one: Pretend someone didn’t watch a single second. What do you tell them?

Josh Schrock: Despite some scratchy moments, Ludvig Aberg took command of this tournament while the other contenders tried desperately to keep their hands on the wheel. As it seems to happen every year, TPC Sawgrass hit back at the end to trim Ludvig’s lead to three, but the day was about his ability to navigate a volatile track while Xander, JT and others not named Michael Thorbjornsen made critical mistakes. The bigger picture is that the Players continues to deliver year in and year out. The course is the perfect test as long as the weather cooperates in March and it always delivers the drama. Sunday will be a lot of fun.

Dylan Dethier: I think I’d start here: The Players rocks and you should watch it tomorrow! It’s funny, I think the “fifth major” talk once again sidetracked us from how great a golf tournament this is. Complete test. Birdies, bogeys, others, drama. Today was great action — big moves and stall-outs too. Ludvig’s out in front. A bunch of flushers are lurking, ready to chase him down. Sunday should be fun.

Piastowski: In a word? Ball striking. In another word? Cool. You need both to win at Sawgrass, and the very top of the leaderboard has a pair of exquisite ball strikers and cool customers in Aberg and Thornbjornsen. Sunday should be extremely entertaining. OK, what’s your takeaway, defining moment from Aberg on Saturday?

Schrock: The defining moment to me was Ludvig’s six-foot putt for par on No. 7. He was skidding all over the place early and was in danger of falling out of the outright lead. He poured it in the center and his lead was four a few holes later. A few takeaways: The first is that when he’s in full flight, as he has been most of the week, Ludvig is mesmerizing to watch. The tee shot he hit on 18 was as pure of a shot as you could draw up in that moment. He scuffled last year after his T7 at the Masters, but the slight tweak he made at Pebble has paid off, and when he’s playing like this, he’s really, really hard to beat. The second takeaway is just that the Players is set up to deliver a career-altering win for someone for the first time since Cam Smith in 2022. Scottie and Rory have dominated this event of late, but on Sunday, we’ll either get a “hello, world” win for Ludvig, a career-elevator for Matt Fitzpatrick, Xander Schauffele or JT, or a breakthrough win for Cameron Young or Michael Thorbjornsen. That’s the good stuff.

Dethier: His eagle at No. 11 just looked so … easy. This is the joy of watching Aberg: At his best he makes it all look smooth, effortless, elegant. That’s how 235-yard long irons end up like that.

Piastowski: Yes, that eagle at 11 was sensational, as was the putt on 7, as was the drive on 18, and I think that’s what captivates folks about Aberg — he may well be capable of doing that consistently over a period of five or six years and wins who knows how many big titles. Shoot, maybe the run starts Sunday. How is Aberg doing it all? What’s the part of his game that impresses you most? 

Schrock: He’s third in strokes gained: off the tee and fourth in approach. He hits it a mile and straight as an arrow. You can attack a lot of the flags at TPC Sawgrass from the short grass, but being out of position is when the big numbers come into play. He’s avoided the big miss with effortless power and precision, which is what always grabs me about Ludvig. 

Dethier: This is a cop-out, but … all of it. The fact that he can hit it as far and fast as he does while still gaining strokes in every facet of the game makes him a real unicorn.

Piastowski: As he walked up 18 after his tee shot on Saturday, the NBC cameras captured Aberg alongside caddie Joe Skovron and on-course analyst Jim “Bones” Mackay — and Aberg was laughing. Laughing in the face of all that danger around him? Impressive. Dylan, you had a nice line in our Slack channel this afternoon — that Michael Thorbjornsen is ‘Aberg-lite.’ Can you expand on that? Josh, agree or disagree? 

Schrock: I think it’s a great comparison. Both blast it with ease and have similar personalities. Also, both TGL stars we can’t forget.

Dethier: Both tall, strong, upright, athletic, still low-key. They’ve played in similar circles since college, where they had a friendly occasional rivalry. Now they both live in the great Ponte Vedra area, play part-time out of TPC Sawgrass and will share tomorrow’s final tee time. Not a bad time to be either of ‘em, to be honest. 

Piastowski: Both have “process-ism,” if I’m allowed to invent a word. I’m not sure they’re completely devoid of nerves — you’ll undoubtedly see a few on Sunday. But man, it really does seem that they lock back into what got them to where they are. They’re kinda nice dudes, too. I think we’d also like to see a Thor-Aberg next September in Ireland. OK, who below those two makes a move on Sunday?

Schrock: I have to think JT will make a run, given his history on this course and how he was able to salvage today’s round after the 7 on No. 6. This course fits his eye and we know he’ll try to play gas-pedal golf tomorrow. Honorable mention to Viktor Hovland, who is quietly in that pack at eight-under. 

Dethier: Xander Schauffele. He hit it so well on Friday but fought his swing Saturday — I think he frees up and fires on Sunday. But wow, there are some fun potential contenders. Hovland, Thomas, Young … this could get really fun.

Piastowski: Let’s have fun. Scottie, out earlier, shoots a 62 and sits back and watches everyone chase him as he eats Chipotle. Some squirrely shots here and there on Saturday, as you’d expect at Sawgrass. What surprised you most?\

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Schrock: I was pretty surprised Cameron Young hit his tee shot on 18 into the water after stuffing it to a foot on 17. He was primed to be in the final pairing with Ludvig before giving two shots back on 18. Thought he’d close in style, but that 18th hole, especially with the wind off the right, gives these guys fits. 

Dethier: Guys seem to have a really tough time committing to the tee shot at No. 12, which is definitely an awkward hole, but 10 bogeys out of 38 players in the late wave on a nearly drivable par-4 is more than I’d expect. 

Piastowski: Justin Thomas could very well be in the final group, if not for a pair of water ball tee shots. But that’s Sawgrass. All right, fine I’ll ask: Is this thing a major? Major worthy? What do you want to call it?

Schrock: It’s not a major and that’s perfectly fine. It’s the PGA Tour’s flagship event on an awesome course that almost always delivers. It rings in the start of the major season, but it’s not itself a major. And that’s OK!

Dethier: No. It’s the Players. And that’s actually great!

Piastowski: Yeah, I like all that. The trial balloon of the whole thing was very interesting to watch, though. All right, who wins this thing? (Bonus, if you like, since Sunday’s Selection Sunday — who wins that thing?)

Schrock: I think Ludvig walks to it. This is a fitting championship for him to win and I think he puts this away by the turn tomorrow. As for March Madness, let me just eat more chalk and take Duke. Really going out on a limb to close us out. 

Dethier: Ludvig. And Michigan. 

Piastowski: Cam Young. In a playoff. And Iowa State. 

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Ludvig Aberg arrived on the 18th tee box at the Players Championship so quickly that he beat the crowd.

As he dipped to place his ball on the tee, setting in motion the warp-speed warmup routine that preempts each of his golf shots, bystanders chattered as they settled into position. It wasn’t their fault, really — they’d witnessed an onslaught of slow, plodding golfers cycle through the 18th, none of whom carried the same urgency as the golfer leading the tournament by four shots as he stepped to address.

Aberg stood over the ball as the first of the crowd began to quiet. And then, just when it seemed he was going to swing, he stopped. He stepped away, held for a second, and committed again.

“Yeah, there’s certain tee balls where, depending where the wind is, you have to really get your lines accurate,” Aberg said later. “That might take a couple of extra seconds.”

A couple of extra seconds. That’s about how much you can convince Ludvig Aberg to slow down if you’re really trying — and the 18th on TPC Sawgrass is always trying. In this case it was hoping to upend a brilliant round of golf and reorient a leaderboard Aberg had spent 53 holes at the Players Championship climbing.

Pace of play is perhaps the biggest outlier of Aberg’s golf game. More than his prolific talent or his unflappable demeanor, his sense of urgency is the component of his game that most endears him to golf fans. Aberg doesn’t waste his time on the course playing the time-consuming mental games that fill so many PGA Tour broadcasts; he simply arrives, commits, and swings.

It’s a beautiful sight, really — the kind many in the golf world thought we’d spend all of last year watching in the final pairings of golf’s biggest events as Aberg announced himself as golf’s next great star. That didn’t happen according to plan, but now, through three days at this Players, it seems the predictions might have been early rather than wrong.

Aberg has looked like the best player in the loaded Players field by a wide margin. If he plays with a three-shot lead on Sunday the way he has while leading on Friday and Saturday, he might cruise his way right into a career-altering win without even breaking a sweat.

But that’s where Aberg’s story gets tricky, because it’s the speed that could trip him up.

“Yeah, whenever I get in a stressful situation I have to slow myself down because I get really fast,” he said Saturday. “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.”

Aberg’s tendency to rush can be a dangerous trait for a golfer with a need for speed, especially at TPC Sawgrass, where mistakes happen quickly and multiply.

Aberg said that he has worked out a system with caddie Joe Skovron to help him navigate the stressful moments when his efficiency tips into hurriedness. Skovron has been instructed to walk behind Aberg — physically forcing him to slow down — but also to call Aberg off a shot if he feels like the decision has happened too quickly.

“I feel like I’ve had enough experiences where I’ve seen it work,” Aberg said. “I’ve seen big events where it’s happened and I kind of calm myself down a little bit. But yeah, for me it’s just the pace of everything just goes up.”

The system works at its best when Skovron needs to say nothing at all. That means Aberg has it under control, and the caddie and player can focus on the main thing. But Sunday at the Players is a unique beast, even for a player with a boatload of big-time tournament experience already.

“I definitely catch myself [when I’m rushing],” Aberg said. “When I feel like I’m in a good frame of mind I definitely catch myself. Sometimes it’s hard to do that.”

It will be hard to catch himself in what could amount to a crowning achievement on Sunday, and harder to keep a leaderboard full of charging golfers at bay while he does it. Yet after pounding his drive down the center of the fairway on 18 and closing the day with a three-shot lead, Aberg was in no hurry to forget about the weight of that challenge.

“I’ll definitely be nervous,” he said. “I’ve been nervous the last three days. I’ve been nervous every time I step on 17 tee box as well. So I think it’s a part of it. I think whoever says they don’t get nervous is not really true to themselves.”

And how could it not be? A triumphant end is in sight for the fastest player in golf. He just can’t be in a rush to get there.

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ORLANDO — Ludvig Åberg did not win Arnie’s event, but he had his best start of the year, finishing third and closing with a 67 that left him tanned, not rested but very much ready for a home game: the 26-year-old Swedish golfer with his picture-perfect swing-from-Byron move lives right down the road from the Stadium Course, home of this week’s Players Championship. He sees Vijay Singh (now and again) on the range there, and Jay Monahan in the clubhouse. He knows every last hook bounce on the course that will finish with a splash.

Yes, what’s true for us is true for them: Keeping your golf ball dry is the highest priority at the course once known as TPC Sawgrass. In the unlikely event that Åberg should forget that credo for even one asleep-at-the-wheel moment, his caddie will surely remind him. Åberg’s caddie, as of this year, is Joe Skovron. Yes, the same cool-and-collected Joe Skovron who packed for Rickie Fowler when Fowler won the 2015 Players. This will be Åberg’s third Players. In 2024, as a rookie, he had a T8 finish. Last year, he missed this cut.  

All manner of position players have won in Ponte Vedra Beach, including Calvin Peete, Lee Janzen, Fred Funk, Tim Clark, Matt Kuchar and Webb Simpson. But let’s not forget the golfers loaded with horsepower who have won there: Greg Norman, Fred Couples, Davis Love, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Scottie Scheffler. Enter Ludvig — all six-foot-three-inches and 190 pounds of him, in form and at home.

“It’s a course where it’s obvious what you have to do but you still have to pull it off,” he said Sunday night at Bay Hill. “You have to hit the right shots at the right time. I love the finish: 16, 17, 18. You have to step up and hit golf shots all the way in.”

Minutes earlier, he had been having a good time, talking to Swedish TV reporters in Swedish. Every once in a while, you’d hear some English: Bay Hill, the Players, a birdie here, a birdie there. Åberg shot 12 under at Bay Hill, three shots out of the Daniel Berger-Akshay Bhatia playoff, won by Bhatia.

He’s not the first Swedish golfer to come to America loaded with promise and talent. Jesper Parnevik, son of a Swedish comedian, had almost too much personality to be a consistent contender on the PGA Tour, but it was delightful to watch him play his twitchy golf. Annika Sorenstam didn’t need great artistry to become one of the best female golfers of all-time — she was relentlessly precise. Åberg might split the difference between them. He’s hugely powerful, like Henrik Stenson, but has more greenside finesse. Each of these four golfers speaks incredibly precise English, as so many European golfers do. Sergio Garcia and Jon Rahm express themselves artfully, in good times and in bad. Seve Ballesteros, in his own way, did, too.

“Sometimes I can’t find a word in English and sometimes I can’t find a word in Swedish,” Åberg said. “It’s a little bit tricky.” It must be in his head. We can’t see it.

Of course, part of the beauty of golf is that it’s an outstanding activity for nonverbal expression. At the 2024 Masters, Åberg won over the galleries not with witty repartee with his playing partners or under the tree. He did it with his superb swing, his pace of play, his easy smile in good times and his no-fuss response to unforced errors. Also, he was the new guy. He finished 2nd in ’24 and 7th last year.

Speaking of nonverbal communication, Woods paid Åberg the ultimate compliment at a TGL event last year. Åberg was warming up. Woods was making a cross-court walk. He stopped, folded his arms across his chest — and watched in silence. It’s not something he does often. 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’s eyes on him, at the TGL event at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

“I remember that,” he said. “It was a nervous, stressful moment.”

In professional golf, if you’re feeling nervous and stressed, something must be going right. It means you’re alive, you’re playing for keeps, you’re aware that there are a million eyeballs. If two of them belong to Tiger Woods, well — there’s a gaze that speaks volumes.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.

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Luke Donald will be the first to tell you that the most important factor in winning a Ryder Cup is to have your stars play like stars. The 2025 European Ryder Cup team built a dominant lead over the Americans at Bethpage Black thanks to Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Jon Rahm being who Europe needed them to be.

“You need your big players to step up,” Donald said on Sunday at Bethpage Black after Europe’s 15-13 win. “Looking at Rome, Viktor [Hovland] was our FedExCup champ. We had Rory. We had Jon. They had 10.5 points without playing together once in Rome.

“This week, Rory has won four out of five. Jon, three out of five. … You could argue Tommy is maybe four out of five. You absolutely need your big guns to fire, and that’s what we are proud of, that the U.S. guys’ big guys, their guns, they didn’t get as many points as ours.”

For two days at Bethpage Black, this was true. McIlroy, Rahm, Fleetwood and Justin Rose were dominant as Europe built a 12-5 lead following Viktor Hovland’s Sunday WD due to a neck injury. But Europe’s big guns were clearly tired from the mental grind of the Ryder Cup. And as their stars fell during Sunday singles while the Americans mounted a furious rally, Donald needed others to save the day.

Shane Lowry’s tie with Russell Henley eventually secured Europe’s retention of the Cup, but the blue-and-gold wouldn’t have conquered Bethpage without two critical early matches that stabilized the proceedings and allowed Lowry to nail the final blow.

The first came from Matt Fitzpatrick, who jumped all over Bryson DeChambeau early in the third match of the day. Fitzpatrick went 5 up through seven holes only to see DeChambeau rally to tie the match on 17. With Rose, Fleetwood and Rahm already defeated and McIlroy running on fumes against Scottie Scheffler, Europe needed Fitzpatrick to salvage a tie against DeChambeau to catch its breath.

Fitzpatrick, who entered the week with a career 1-7-0 Ryder Cup record, split the fairway at 18 and hit his approach shot short to 39 feet. With the pressure ratcheted up, Fitzpatrick hit his lag putt to 10 inches to get in with par and secure a half point for Europe. He finished the week going 2-1-1 and brought Europe closer to victory by stopping one of America’s big guns from completing what would have been a momentum-fueling comeback.

Moments after Fitzpatrick secured a half point, Ludvig Åberg, who was a Ryder Cup rookie in Rome in 2023 but has blossomed into a star since, put the finishing touches on his match against Patrick Cantlay, winning 2 up to bring Europe to within a half point of retaining the Cup. The final member of Europe’s Sunday singles “firewall” was the only one to put a blue flag on the board.

“Today, I was proud of the way that I played,” Åberg said Sunday. “And I’m proud of being a part of this team. There’s 11 guys that I have tremendous joy to have been a part of and a captain that I’m so happy that he put trust in me, and I’m just trying to repay that by playing good golf. Yeah, today is a day that I’m going to remember for a very, very long time.”

As for Fitzpatrick, the four-time Ryder Cupper’s heroic will best be remembered not by a quote or a single shot, but by two gestures that will live in European highlight reels. The first was a celebratory moment with the visiting European crowd on Saturday evening after he and Tyrrell Hatton finished off Sam Burns and Patrick Cantlay in four-ball to give the Europeans a seven-point lead.

“I have to cut this short,” Fitzpatrick said of his interview after he and Hatton’s momentum-building win. “I want to go celebrate with them. The atmosphere is out of this world.”

The second came Sunday as he was locked in a battle with DeChambeau.

After winning the 8th and 9th holes, DeChambeau had cut Fitzpatrick’s lead to 3 up. With a wave of red building and the American crowd trying to boost DeChambeau to a comeback, Fitzpatrick needed a response. DeChambeau appeared ready to cut Fitzpatrick’s lead to two when he birdied the 12th, but the Englishman answered with a birdie of his own and gestured to the crowd to calm down — this would not be America’s version of the “Miracle at Medinah.”

The unsung heroics of Fitzpatrick and Åberg are representative of the larger reason for Europe’s Ryder Cup victory — a culture that asks 12 of the world’s best players to check their egos at the team-room door and do what is asked to cement their place in history. It’s a culture that has buy-in from every single member.

“I think those weeks we spend together are the ones we remember the most and the ones we cherish the most because of the time we get to spend with each other,” Donald said of his success as captain. “That’s a big part of my captaincy is to create an environment where these guys are having the best weeks of their lives, honestly. We’ll always remember this. We’ll always go down in history. We talk about all the people that came before us that paved the way for us. Now future generations will talk about this team tonight and what they did and how they were able to overcome one of the toughest environments in all of sport.

“And that is inspiring to me and that’s what Rory gets and all these other 11 guys get, as well.”

And Europe needed every single one to conquer Bethpage and write their names in European Ryder Cup history.

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Last year at the U.S. Open, Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau dueled on the weekend at Pinehurst No. 2, with DeChambeau coming out on top.

It has been a different story at this year’s U.S. Open for two of golf’s protagonists. Instead of battling each other at famed Oakmont, McIlroy and DeChambeau spent Friday fighting the Henry Fownes-designed brute in an attempt to play the weekend.

McIlroy carded an opening-round four-over 74 and then started his second round with two double bogeys in his first three holes to put him behind the eight ball. But the reigning Masters champion showed some fight down the stretch, which included tomahawking a club and obliterating a tee marker. (Oakmont has that effect.) McIlroy birdied 15 and 18 to slide inside the number and play the weekend.

Friday was different for DeChambeau, who got knocked out by Oakmont courtesy of a second-round 77 that saw him come home in 40 to miss the seven-over cut by three.

DeChambeau wasn’t the only big name to get bludgeoned by Oakmont and see his tournament end early.

Oakmont has won the first two rounds. We have 36 holes to go.

13 players who missed the 2025 U.S. Open’s seven-over cut

Bryson DeChambeau (73-77, 10 over)

The defending U.S. Open champion has been a fixture on major championship leaderboards over the last two years, but the Crushers frontman didn’t have his A-game at Oakmont this week.

DeChambeau ground out a three-over 73 in Round 1 and made the turn Friday at five over for the championship. That’s when the wheels came off. After starting on the back nine, DeChambeau arrived at the treacherous front nine and let it all slip away. He bogeyed No. 1, but he got the shot back with a birdie at the second. Then, he bogeyed the third, doubled the fifth, bogeyed the sixth and seventh to slide to 10 over par and end his title defense.

Ludvig Åberg (72-76, 8 over)

Åberg jumped out of the gates fast on Thursday and hung tough to post a 72, putting him squarely in the mix after the first round. But a second round with six bogeys and no birdies meant the young Swede’s week ended early. Åberg has now missed two straight cuts at majors and has only made one major cut in his career outside of the Masters (2024 U.S. Open).

Justin Thomas (76-76, 12 over)

Poor major showings are becoming a common occurrence for Thomas. In his last 13 majors, Thomas is a combined 72 over par and has missed seven cuts. He has just one top 10 in that span, which came at the 2024 PGA Championship.

Thomas’ Oakmont experience was punctuated by a four-putt double bogey from 22 feet on the par-5 12th on Friday.

Tommy Fleetwood (74-75, 9 over)

The Englishman spent 97 percent of the first two rounds inside the cut line. He arrived at the par-4 ninth hole on Friday, his final of the day, one shot inside the projected cutline. That’s when disaster struck. Fleetwood drove it into the fairway bunker and had to hack out. His third landed on the green some 40 feet from the pin. He then three-putted for a double bogey to end his tournament.

Dustin Johnson (75-75, 10 over)

It was a different walk around Oakmont for the 2016 U.S. Open champion this time around.

Johnson has now missed six of his last eight major cuts. He has just one major top 10 in his last 11 majors. The search for the Dustin Johnson of old continues for the 40-year-old.

Joaquin Niemann (75-75, 10 over)

Niemann carded his first major top 10 at the 2025 PGA Championship, but he was no match for Oakmont.

The 26-year-old Chilean, who has won four times on LIV this season, hit just 12 of 28 fairways over two rounds and is still looking to prove he can be a legitimate threat in major championships.

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Phil Mickelson (74-74, 8 over)

In what could potentially be his final U.S. Open, Mickelson scratched and clawed at Oakmont through two rounds. The 54-year-old was well inside the cutline midway through the second round, but double bogeys at No. 15 and No. 17 put him on the outside looking in, and his birdie putt at No. 18 grazed the edge but didn’t fall.

Mickelson, whose U.S. Open exemption runs out after this year, has now missed seven of his last nine cuts in majors.

Sepp Straka (78-73, 11 over)

The No. 8 player in the world got punched in the face during the first round and was unable to grind out an under-par round on Friday to make the cut.

Straka has missed the cut in each of the first three majors of the season and hasn’t had a top 10 in a major since the 2023 Open Championship.

Shane Lowry (79-78, 17 over)

Lowry was the 54-hole leader at the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont, but he had a much harder time around the iconic course this week.

Lowry lost 4.41 strokes putting in the first round en route to a 79 that included a hole-out eagle. He opened the second round with three bogeys and a double to end his championship. Lowry has gone T42-MC-MC at the first three majors this year.

Justin Rose (77-77, 14 over)

Rose’s slide since his Masters runner-up continued at Oakmont. He lost 4.45 strokes on the greens in Round 1 en route to a seven-over 77. In the second round, his struggles were off the tee as he opened with a front-nine 40 to spell the end of his tournament.

The Englishman has missed two straight cuts after narrowly losing out on the green jacket to Rory McIlroy.

Cameron Smith, (75-73, 8 over)

The 2022 Open champion continues to be a non-factor at major championships this season. Smith has now missed his last four major cuts and hasn’t carded a top-10 finish since the 2024 Masters.

Wyndham Clark (74-74, 8 over)

The struggles continue for the 2023 U.S. Open champion. Clark lost shots off the tee and on approach over two rounds at Oakmont. He arrived at his final hole Friday on the cutline, but a sloppy bogey sent him home early.

Clark has now missed four of his last seven major cuts and hasn’t finished in the top 30 of a major since his 2023 win at Los Angeles Country Club.

Patrick Cantlay (76-72, 8 over)

Like Clark, Cantlay needed a par at his final hole to play the weekend. But he hit his tee shot on the par-4 18th into the right fairway bunker. He chopped out and flew his third into the greenside rough. His par chip came up short, and Cantlay missed his second major championship cut in a row.

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Augusta National is full of intricacies and diabolical shots that must be played to perfection if you plan to rise up the leaderboard and contend for a green jacket.

On Tuesday, Viktor Hovland perfectly described the challenge the iconic course presents, noting that if your “technique” is off in any aspect, you will not have a fun walk. There are countless shots — from the approach into 11 green to the tee shot on 12 — that determine who survives and who crumbles at Augusta National.

But during Thursday’s first round of the 2025 Masters, one treacherous shot claimed several victims: the second into the 550-yard par-5 15th.

With the pin tucked in the front right, players going for the green in two were faced with a difficult task of trying to hold the rebuilt, firm green with a mid- or long iron, knowing that if the ball bounced over the green, they would be left with a difficult downhill chip that could race past the hole and into the water.

“I had a full 4-iron in there today, and I pulled it a little bit, landed middle of the green, and it bounced a good — it was probably a good 10 steps over the green almost,” Viktor Hovland, who shot one under, said. “It’s just really difficult. I hit a really nice pitch shot, and I made sure to aim it really far left, away from the pin, because you can easily hit a nice pitch on that green, and it just rolls in the water, which I’m sure a lot of guys did today.

“You don’t have to be far off to make a double or hit it in the water or whatnot.”

Hovland played a nice chip and was able to make birdie.

Others were not so lucky.

Patrick Cantlay arrived at the 15th at one-under par. He hit his second shot into the green; it took a massive hop and caromed 42 yards away from the pin. Cantlay’s pitch from over the back of the green bounced twice on the fringe and then rolled past the hole, off the green and into the water. Cantlay reloaded and found the watery grave again. He walked off with a triple bogey and finished two over.

A few groups later, Rory McIlroy arrived at the 15th on cruise control. He was four under and had just blistered a drive down the middle of the fairway. McIlroy’s second landed pin high but bounded over the green, and his chip took two big bounces and quickly rolled past the cup and into the water.

It’s a debale McIlroy foresaw days before. He knew what was lurking on No. 15 at Augusta National.

Rory McIlroy foresaw his Thursday debacle at the 2025 Masters on Tuesday — at least he knew what was lurking on No. 15 at Augusta National.

“I think everyone saw the ladies playing here on Saturday that those greens always are a little bit firmer, especially 15, for example, watching the balls shoot through that green,” McIlroy said during his pre-tournament press conference.

He made double and finished the day at even par.

“It’s tricky,” Ludvig Aberg, who shot four under, said of the 15th. “The green is new, so it gets a little bit firmer than some of the other ones. I was fortunate to get my drive pretty far down there so I could hit an iron in there. But obviously, you’re playing with fire when you’re messing with that front, especially with a short pin. That chip from long isn’t easy, either. We said this week that if we’re in between numbers and you don’t love it, then you should always lay up and take the wedge. It might seem boring, but a 5 isn’t a terrible score on that hole. But it’s a good golf hole.”

Tyrrell Hatton, who has a history of disliking the 15th, known as “Firethorn,” might not agree with the “good golf hole” assessment from Aberg.

“The wedge shot is so hard. I think over the years as well that green has got firmer and firmer. I really wish they hadn’t lengthened it,” Hatton said. “… Jordan [Spieth], I think he hit 5-iron in today, which OK, he’s hitting an iron, but he’s landed it short of the pin on the green and if it goes two yards further it’s off the back. He’s hit an amazing shot, but it’s just holding the green to the front pin. When you move that pin over on the left, it’s going to be near impossible to hold the green because if we don’t have any rain, it’s going to keep getting firmer.”

With limited rain in the forecast, it’s a green that likely will only continue to firm up as the week goes on.

By the time Sunday rolls around, how the contenders decide to attack “Firethorn” could very well end up deciding who slips on the jacket when all is said and done.

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