Scottie Scheffler goes low, Ludvig Aberg making bombs among 5 things to know at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

Catch up on the action here.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Ludvig Aberg’s putter was hot from the get-go on Friday at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The 24-year-old Swede sank a 42-foot birdie putt at the first and rolled in a 36-foot eagle putt from off the green at the second and hardly slowed down – he drained a 28-footer at the fourth – en route to carding a bogey-free 7-under 65 in the second round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

“I don’t remember the last time I did that,” he said of draining two bombs to start a round. “So, obviously that’s a little bonus.”

Aberg improved to 11-under 133 and tied for the 36-hole lead with world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler (64) and first-round leader Thomas Detry, who shot 2-under 70 at Spyglass Hill Golf Course.

Pebble Pro-Am: Saturday tee times | Photos

Aberg, who had a four-putt from four feet a week ago at the Farmers Insurance Open and finished T-9, led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting on Friday, holing more than 120 feet of putts.

“I felt like over these last couple of weeks it’s been quite streaky,” he said of his putting. “It’s been a little bit a lot of good and a lot of bad. We just checked a little bit of alignment, a little bit of setup yesterday and try to keep it inside the frame.”

It paid quick dividends as he added a nine-foot uphill birdie at 11 and a tap-in two-putt birdie from long range at the par-5 14th. Aberg is making his debut in this event, but he played here twice in college for Texas Tech in the Carmel Cup.

“I never played well here actually,” he said with a smile. “I never did.”

Apparently, he’s a quick learner.

Here are four more things to know at the midway point of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am 2024 odds, course history and picks to win

Is JT back?

The PGA Tour is back on the Monterey Peninsula for this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the second signature event of 2024.

The old Crosby Clambake got a facelift this offseason, with amateurs playing on just Thursday and Friday. Monterey Peninsula Country Club was cut from the rotation, meaning the field will play Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill for the first two rounds before the pros battle for the championship at Pebble over the weekend.

Thanks to its elevated status, this year’s field is loaded: World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland, Jordan Spieth, Max Homa, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay will all tee it up Thursday morning.

Golf courses

Pebble Beach Golf Links | Par 72 | 6,972 yards

Spyglass Hill | Par 72 | 7,041 yards

2023 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am
Matt Fitzpatrick of England putts on the seventh green during the third round of the 2023 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

Betting preview

Farmers Insurance Open 2024 odds, course history and picks to win

It’s almost go time in San Diego.

For many, this week is the unofficial start of the golf season.

The PGA Tour is back at Torrey Pines in San Diego, California, for the 2024 Farmers Insurance Open. The property’s North and South courses will be used for the first two rounds before the final 36 are played on the South Course on Friday and Saturday — yes, there’s a Saturday finish this week.

Defending champion Max Homa is back to defend his title and is joined in the field by Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Ludvig Aberg, Tony Finau and Jason Day.

We haven’t seen Homa since he tied for 14th at the 2024 opener in Maui.

Golf course

Torrey Pines (North) | Par 72 | 7,258 yards

Torrey Pines (South) | Par 72 | 7,765 yards

2023 Farmers Insurance Open
The third green on the South Course at Torrey Pines for the 2023 Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego. (Photo: Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images)

Betting preview

How ‘intimidating’ Ryder Cup selection propelled Ludvig Aberg on stellar year-end run

Aberg would move into the top 10 in the world with a win this week.

When Ludvig Aberg was selected as the final captain’s pick for the European Ryder Cup team last year, he was put into a group chat with many of the game’s biggest stars.

Rory McIlroy. Jon Rahm. Viktor Hovland.

Problem is, he had no idea whose number was whose in the team group chat.

He had only Nicolai Hojgaard’s and Sepp Straka’s numbers.

“None of the other guys,” Aberg said.

The 24-year-old Swede’s rise has been meteoric. A year ago, he was playing in college for Texas Tech. Now, he’s one of the game’s brightest young stars and in the field at the season-opening The Sentry at Kapalua in Hawaii. Formerly known as the Tournament of Champions, the event is reserved for those who won on the PGA Tour in the previous year or finished in the top 50 of the FedEx Cup standings.

The Sentry: Photos | Thursday tee times

Aberg didn’t get his PGA Tour card until May, making his first start at the RBC Canadian Open. In between then and now, he has won on the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and has been a part of the victorious European Ryder Cup team.

And it was Aberg’s selection to the latter that helped show him he belonged on the biggest stage.

“It was definitely intimidating,” Aberg said Wednesday of being a captain’s pick. “If I said it wasn’t, I would be lying because it is what you want to do, but it’s also quite nerve-racking at times. I think I did it quite well, just to be OK with it being intimidating and nerve-racking. I was just being OK with all the emotions that might show up and I didn’t try to fight it, I didn’t try to block it out, it was just try to embrace it and obviously have a lot of fun as well.”

His win in the Omega European Masters solidified his spot on the Ryder Cup squad. Then, he closed his rookie PGA Tour season going 61-61 on the weekend to win the RSM Classic.

Now, expectations are high for Aberg, who’s excited for his first appearance at Kapalua.

“I think there’s always going to be expectations, it’s kind of what you sign up for in professional sports,” Aberg said. “So I do understand that it is a part of it, but I’m always going to have a lot of expectations on myself as well. I know my qualities and I know what I want to do, so if I don’t live up to that, I’m going to be pissed myself.”

“So obviously I understand all the things, the outside noise, but that’s also nothing that I can really control. It is what it is and all I can try to do is play each tournament the best I can and then kind of see where that goes.”

With a win this week, Aberg would move into the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking.

As far as his expectations this year, he’s looking forward to playing many of the famed courses on the PGA Tour’s schedule.

“We were looking at the schedule the other week, and it’s just one tournament after another that I’m like, ‘Whoa, I just want to play it,'” Aberg said. “Bay Hill, Players, Pebble, Genesis, I think that’s what I’m really looking forward to. Obviously you want to perform, and I’m a competitor, so I want to compete, but I don’t have like a set number or something like that that I’m looking toward.”

[lawrence-auto-related count=4 category=1375]

Did PGA Tour players botch their Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year winners? Let’s see what the numbers have to say

The races for both awards were close, and those who came up short can make the case they should’ve won.

Three days into the new year, and the PGA Tour finally announced its winners for the 2023 Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year awards ahead of its first event of 2024 later this week in Hawaii.

Scottie Scheffler won the Jack Nicklaus Award as the Player of the Year for the second consecutive season while Eric Cole picked up the Arnold Palmer Award as the Rookie of the Year. Both had terrific seasons and were worthy of consideration, but should they have been the winners?

Below is a pair of tables for both awards with blind resumes for each. Let’s see what the numbers have to say for both honors.

Player of the Year

Player Wins Major finishes Runner-up Top 10 Top 25 Missed cuts Total events
Player 1 4 1-T50-T10-T2 2 10 13 1 20
Player 2 2 T10-T2-3-T23 2 17 21 0 23
Player 3 3 T7-T2-19-T13 1 9 18 0 23

Talk about two stellar seasons. Players 2 and 3 didn’t miss a cut and were more consistent with top 10 and top 25 finishes, though they did make three more starts. Player 2 was more consistent but didn’t win as much as Players 3 or 1 (who also bagged a major championship).

Nine players out of 10 would take Player 1’s season over Players 2 or 3. Winning matters more to these guys than just about anything. They don’t tee it up to simply compete and get in contention. That extra win for Player 3 might even trump the slightly more consistent year of Player 2.

Player 1 was Jon Rahm, Player 2 was Scheffler, and Player 3 was FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland, who claimed the last two playoff events of the season.

The players will catch some considerable flack for Rahm’s apparent slight, especially after the Spaniard recently took his talents to the rival LIV Golf. This also marks the second consecutive year the winner of the season-long FedEx Cup wasn’t the Player of the Year.

Rookie of the Year

Player Wins Runner-up Top 10 Top 25 Missed cuts Total events
Player 1 1 1 4 8 1 11
Player 2 0 2 7 14 10 37

These two contenders had considerably different seasons. Player 1 has a smaller body of work but holds a clear advantage with a win. He finished inside the top 10 in 36 percent of his starts and 73 percent of the time he was in the top 25. Comparatively, 19 percent of the time Player 2 was in the top 10, and 38 percent of his starts ended with top 25 finishes. Once again, the advantage goes to Player 1 (although Player 2 made three times the appearances).

If you didn’t figure it out just by seeing the stats, Player 1 was rising star Ludvig Aberg, while Player 2 was the award-winner Cole. Aberg was in college for more than half the Tour’s season, and his fewer appearances may have weighed him down in the eyes of his peers. That said, he played as often as he could and contended more than his counterpart.

All five players were worthy of consideration, but the numbers point to different outcomes.

[lawrence-auto-related count=4 category=1375]

Ludvig Aberg carrying a snow broom in his bag during a round of golf in Sweden feels like holiday magic

Aberg expected milder temperatures, but instead got a layer of snow on his home course.

Ludvig Aberg is quickly ascending to Swedish golf royalty after his selection to the European Ryder Cup team as well as a pair of professional victories in what was a whirlwind year of 2023.

A year ago at this time, Aberg was plying his trade in the flat, warm climes of Lubbock, Texas, as a member of the Texas Tech men’s golf team.

The native of Eslov, Sweden, captured the Omega European Masters in September for his first DP World Tour victory and then followed up soon after by claiming his first PGA Tour title in just his 11th start with a four-round total of 29-under 253 at the RSM Classic, tying the lowest 72-hole score in Tour history.

Aberg missed just one cut in 11 starts during the Tour’s fall schedule, and finished inside the top 25 eight times, including a runner-up at the Sanderson Farms Championship.

And with royalty comes the spoils, right?

Aberg enjoyed some well-deserved time off by heading back to his native country and snuck in a round at Valkommen till Eslovs Golfklubb, the course where he was introduced to the game by his father.

But while Aberg expected milder temperatures, he instead got a layer of snow on his home course. Rather than sit the day out, he took to the links with an additional accessory in his bag: a broom to sweep away the snow.

“The biggest challenge is probably to get the tee in the ground,” Aberg said during the clip.

The Swedish club was founded in 1968 with the building of the first nine, but the course is located on historic land that belonged to the Ellinge Manor dating back to the 12th century.

Ellinge Castle can be seen from holes 11 and 12, a spot Aberg passed consistently by during his rise to royalty.

[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=451193079]

2023 Golfweek Awards: Male Amateur of the Year

The 2023 Golfweek Award winner for Male Amateur of the Year goes to …

What a year it was for men’s amateur golfers.

Players dominated the college game and others took over the scene during the summer. An amateur legend further cemented his legacy while one of the up-and-comers continued to make a name for himself.

When it came to selecting Golfweek‘s Male Amateur of the Year, there were plenty of candidates to choose from, but one stood out among the rest. This player did something this summer that had only ever been done once by a guy named Tiger Woods. I wonder what he’s up to these days.

The 2023 Golfweek Award winner for Male Amateur of the Year goes to …

MORE: Every Golfweek Award for 2023

Biggest risers, fallers in the Golfweek/Sagarin men’s pro golf rankings in 2023

The old phrase “what a difference a year” makes certainly applies to a good number of pro golfers.

The old phrase “what a difference a year” makes certainly applies to a good number of pro golfers.

When it comes to the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings for men’s professional golf, there some good and some not so good in terms of where players ranked a year ago as compared to now.

For Will Zalatoris, he was one of the big sliders the wrong direction. Not his fault, really, as he underwent back surgery and missed a lot of action.

Meanwhile, rising star Ludvig Aberg is more like a shooting star, as he has rocketed into the top 10 of the December 2023 rankings.

Here’s a closer look at some of the biggest movers in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings from a year ago. How they work:

Jeff Sagarin’s rating system is based on a mathematical formula that uses a player’s won-lost-tied record against other players when they play on the same course on the same day, and the stroke differential between those players, then links all players to one another based on common opponents. The ratings give an indication of who is playing well over the past 52 weeks.

Also, players must have played in at least 10 events to be ranked.

Editor’s note: We’ve included the Official World Golf Ranking for the sake of comparison.

Ludvig Aberg joins Ryder Cup teammate in rejecting another LIV Golf contract

Aberg is the latest player to reject LIV Golf after Jon Rahm’s departure for the league.

A few days after Viktor Hovland dispelled LIV Golf rumors while also taking PGA Tour management to task, the Norwegian’s Ryder Cup teammate has shot down interest in the upstart circuit.

Ludvig Aberg, who has received offers from LIV Golf in the past, says he denied another offer from the Saudi Arabian-backed league following his breakout rookie season on the PGA Tour.

“When I look back, I am super confident in my decision,” Aberg told SVT Sport via a Google translation. “I will never try to chase money, what I do is to compete. I did the right thing.”

“I want to play against the best, because I am a competitive person and like to compete against the best players,” Aberg said. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that at the moment, it’s a bit more fragmented.”

“When I look at the PGA Tour and the competitions there, there is so much history around all the competitions,” he added. “And that’s what I like, that’s what I go for. But then you have to respect everyone’s decisions.”

The 24-year-old rising Swedish star was the first player to earn his PGA Tour card via PGA Tour University and ran with his opportunity. Aberg missed just one cut in 11 starts, finished inside the top 25 eight times including a runner-up at the Sanderson Farms Championship and his first win at the season-ending RSM Classic. A month before his win at Sea Island, Aberg earned his first professional victory at the DP World Tour’s Omega European Masters. As a Ryder Cup rookie, Aberg compiled a 2-2 record, including an impressive 2-1 showing alongside Hovland.

LIV is still trying to fill its teams for the 2024 season, which begins in less than two months in Mexico. Aberg and Hovland joined Tony Finau as the high-profile PGA Tour players who have rejected the league in the wake of Jon Rahm’s departure.

[lawrence-auto-related count=4 category=451198867]

Staff picks: Who will win their first major championship in 2024?

Don’t be surprised if a handful of rising stars command the spotlight in 2024.

Four of the five major champions on the women’s side in 2023 were first-time winners. As for the men? Two of four.

As the golf world moves on from 2023 and looks ahead to 2024, we got to thinking, who is most likely to add a major championship to their resume for the first time in the new year? Several writers on Golfweek‘s staff have made their picks, some surprising, some not so much.

Men’s 2024 major venues: Augusta National Golf Club (Masters), Valhalla Golf Club (PGA Championship), Pinehurst No. 2 (U.S. Open) and Royal Troon (Open Championship).

Women’s 2024 major venues: The Club at Carlton Woods (Chevron Championship), Lancaster Country Club (U.S. Women’s Open), Sahalee Country Club (KPMG Women’s PGA Championship), Evian Resort Golf Club (Amundi Evian Championship), The Old Course at St. Andrews (AIG Women’s Open).