2023 Ryder Cup: Ludvig Aberg’s summer rise culminates with trip to Rome as European captain’s pick

Four months ago, Ludvig Aberg was playing against Bard Bjornevik Skogen and Sam Sommerhauser in the Thunderbird Collegiate. Four weeks from now, he’ll be playing against Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth in the Ryder Cup.

How did this happen?

For starters, Aberg won his last tournament out before Luke Donald selected him as a captain’s pick for the European Ryder Cup team on Monday. He did it in style, shooting 64 on Sunday with birdies on four of his last five holes. But that victory was really just the culmination of a summer of success for Aberg in the eyes of Donald.

After finishing T7 at the aforementioned Thunderbird Collegiate for Texas Tech, Aberg ripped off wins at the Big 12 Championship and NCAA Regionals in Norman, Oklahoma. That’s college golf, though, a far cry from the cauldron of a Ryder Cup Sunday. There must have been some bridge that connected the 23-year-old Swede to Rome.

If you had to circle a stretch to fit the criteria, it would probably be in July. Donald played with Aberg over the first two rounds of the Rocket Mortgage Classic where Aberg shot 65-67 to open the festivities. He walked away delighted with what he saw.

“[Donald] told me there have only been a few [players] that he’s played with for the very first time that have the ‘wow’ factor,” said Golf Channel’s Nick Dougherty during that event. “One of them is Rory. That was back in 2008 at the Dunhill Links. Now he says Ludvig Aberg is one of those guys as well. He said his driver is a huge weapon, he makes the game look effortless. He added that as long as he continues to show form, he will definitely be considered for the [Ryder Cup] team. … This guy is going to be a superstar.”

Momentum began to build. Aberg fell off the pace at the Rocket Mortgage but then finished T4 at the John Deere Classic the following week. That was when he took Donald up on some advice from Detroit. 

“We were obviously keeping an eye on him. I played with him in Detroit and was blown away by his game. I challenged him to come over to Europe and play a couple weeks. He finished fifth in Czech, and obviously you know what he did yesterday. For someone who’s so inexperienced, it’s so so impressive.”

A lot of factors go into a single player making a Ryder Cup team. Donald spoke as if Aberg was well inside the line, but it’s important to point out that nobody went out and claimed one of the final few spots on the European side. The top of that team has been set for a while with Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland and the list goes on. The bottom, though? I’d heard names that don’t necessarily get the juices flowing. Names like Stephan Jaeger, Aaron Rai, Yannik Paul and Thomas Detry.

Donald knew what he had, making the pick that much easier.

Here’s a stat: Following the Omega Masters, which Aberg won over fellow Ryder Cupper Matt Fitzpatrick on Sunday, the Swede ranked 7th in strokes gained over the last three months of all Europeans eligible for the team. Over the last six months, he ranked No. 9. Over the last 12 months, he also ranked No. 8. 

So this is not the “Thunderbird Collegiate to Ryder Cup singles” Cinderella story it perhaps looks like on the surface. Aberg has been thriving for a while, even if he was not getting paid for his efforts.

That leads us to the next point. Aberg is a good choice in the present, but he also represents the future. He projects as a star. He and American Gordon Sargent have shared the No. 1 ranking in the World Amateur Golf Rankings for most of the last year, which normally is a pretty good indication of what’s to come. Other former No. 1 players who held the spot for a similar amount of (or less) time include Fitzpatrick, Rickie Fowler, Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa.

Aberg is one of two players to win two Ben Hogan Awards in college. A fellow by the name of Jon Rahm is the other. Aberg swept the Ben Hogan Award, the Jack Nicklaus Award and the Haskins Award (college golf’s Heisman) this year. He finished No. 1 on the PGA Tour University list and earned his PGA Tour card through the end of 2024 as a result.

“We obviously knew what he was doing in the college scene,” said Donald. “You look at what he did those four years, the only comparables really are Viktor Hovland and Jon Rahm in the last 20 years. He’s that good, what he was doing.”

That combination of no veterans playing their way into the bottom spots, no LIV players available to pick and Aberg’s ceiling in the future led to this. His skillset helped. On a course that will likely reward insanely good driving, Aberg fits in nicely. It’s easily his greatest asset and the one he’ll bring to a table full of European players loaded with it.

So, too, did the intrigue by other players in his orbit who were already on the team. In a No Laying Up podcast from two weeks ago, Sky Sports’ Jamie Weir noted that of the players already on the team to whom he talked, one thought Aberg would probably fill the last spot and another projected Alex Noren. That team will not be surprised by his attendance in Rome.

Aberg might be surprised himself, though. There have not been many players with less experience than Aberg thrown into this kind of fire. There also cannot have been many players who started their golf year in Lubbock, Texas, and ended it in Rome, Italy. 

“Probably not,” he said when asked if he thought this was going to happen. “If you would have told me a couple months ago that I was going to be in these conversations, probably would not have believed you.”

The hype seems real, though. And even if it’s not, the Europeans have enough coverage at the top of their roster to protect the youngster (and his even younger colleague, Nicolai Hojgaard). 

There are still plenty of unknowns, which cuts both ways. It could be a disastrous pick for Donald when Aberg goes 0-3-0 and Europe gets run off the course by a team it has owned on European soil. The alternative is just as much in play, though, which is most of the fun with this pick. And the alternative is that we might just be scratching the surface with a future star who’s afraid of nobody. What if the moment is far too big for somebody who’s never even felt the pressure of a major championship and he has no answers for Morikawa, Scheffler and Brooks Koepka? 

But also … what if it’s not?