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.
