Ludvig Åberg is continuing to learn the ropes of the PGA Tour.
In his third season, the 25-year-old Swede earned his second Tour win, and first since 2023, at the Genesis Invitational in February, one of the season’s marquee events.
Since then, however, he has one top 10 (a seventh-place finish at the Masters) and missed the cut in the PGA Championship and U.S. Open.
Still, Åberg took some positives from Oakmont.
“Obviously, Oakmont is Oakmont,” Åberg told Sports Illustrated ahead of this week’s Travelers Championship, “and if you’re not 100% sharp, you’re going to get punished and that was the case for me.
“I felt like I played a decent round on Thursday [shooting 72], but finished a little poorly. I think you have to be a little bit careful when analyzing a tournament like the U.S. Open, when you don’t have to be that off to get punished.
“I still feel like I’m liking the way my body’s moving and the things that I’m working on. So I’d say over these last couple of weeks, I’ve seen improvements, which really make me optimistic.”
The world No. 10 was entering the U.S. Open with momentum. He placed T16 at the Memorial Tournament and T13 at the RBC Canadian Open. Before those events, he decided to tweak his swing. Åberg felt he was getting a bit too far on one side and leaving his clubface too open.
That has been a problem for Åberg since he played collegiately at Texas Tech.
“I have had a pretty strong face and a pretty strong grip and we made an intentional change at the end of last year to get that a little bit weaker,” Åberg says. “My right hand, especially, so that it would be a little bit easier for me to hit certain shots, although, I’ve gotten a little bit too far on that side now, so that my right hand just made the face go way too deep and way too weak and when it got weak, I start swinging it left too much and I leave it open and it becomes hard for me to play golf that way.”
Therefore, he reverted back to a stronger face, which allows him to be more active and on top of the ball.
Åberg’s weapon is his driver, as he’s 10th on Tour in strokes-gained off the tee. He seeks improvement with his this short-game, though, losing strokes in scrambling and putting.
He’s adjusting to Tour life off the course, too.
“I’m always going to have really high expectations on myself, no matter where I am, and I felt like I’ve handled that pretty well,” he says. “I’m still somewhat new to the scene in terms of dealing with corporate partnerships and all these things and I’m learning more about myself and how to engage with those things.”
Åberg’s expectations two years ago were sky-high. And that intensified when he made the 2023 European Ryder Cup team before playing in his first major championship, becoming the first player ever to do that.
“I think he’s a generational talent,” European captain Luke Donald said about Åberg after selecting him for the team.
Now with 50 Tour starts under his belt, how would Åberg assess his career thus far?
“These last two years have sort of helped me propel my career and kick-start my career,” he says. “I understand and I appreciate that a golf career is going to be long … I keep reminding myself that I feel like I’ve done pretty well over the last couple of years in order to put myself in this position and at the same time still have the gratitude that golf is hard and golf is a very humbling sport.”
And still with a boatload of chances to fulfill his lofty expectations, Åberg is embracing the grind.
“That’s the fun part about golf,” he says, “there’s always things to work on and there’s always things to improve on, no matter where you are in the game.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Ludvig Åberg Is Adjusting to Life on the PGA Tour After Lofty Expectations .