Near miss in Major debut only stokes Ludvig Aberg’s fire

Augusta — Ludvig Aberg may have fallen short in his bid to make a winning Major championship debut on Sunday but his runner-up finish was the best by a Swede at the Masters and reaffirmed his belief that his day in the winner’s circle will come.

Starting the final round three shots back of Scottie Scheffler, the 24-year-old went toe-to-toe with the world No 1 as he tried to reel him in but was ultimately unable to get the job done.

His closing round of 69 saw him finish at seven-under-par for the tournament, four shots back of the American.

“This being my first Major championship, you never really know what it’s going to be like until you’re there and experience it,” said Aberg.

“This week has given me a lot of experiences and a lot of lessons learnt in terms of those things. It makes me really hungry, and it makes me want to do it again and again.”

While some observers may not have been familiar with Aberg before the Masters, he did not come out of nowhere.

He enjoyed a meteoric rise having started 2023 outside the top 3,000 in the world rankings and ended the year inside the top 30.

Aberg, who was also part of Europe’s winning Ryder Cup team in Italy last October, felt his performances over four days at Augusta National will give him confidence for the rest of the season.

“I felt … coming into this week … I was playing well and I was swinging the way I wanted to,” said Aberg, whose hopes were ultimately crushed by a double bogey at the par-four 11th where his second shot ended up in a pond.

“But … there’s so much more to golf. There’s a lot of things that need to come together, and I felt like we did a lot of golf stuff the last couple of weeks.”

Aberg, who like any golfer has his heart set on winning major championships and becoming world No 1, said his week at Augusta National had helped get him get one step closer to those dreams.

“It’s been that way ever since I picked up a golf club, and that hasn’t changed,” said Aberg, who had been bidding to become the first Masters rookie to win a Green Jacket since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979.

“So this week solidifies a lot of those things [that] are there, and we just need to keep doing those things and put ourselves in positions to win tournaments.”

Reuters