sport news Ludvig Aberg is golf's next generational talent and his meteoric rise has ... trends now
It does not take Ludvig Aberg long to list the indulgences he has afforded himself from a rise that is almost unmatched for speed in the recent history of golf.
‘I get asked sometimes if I have splurged on anything,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘You know, I think the only thing I bought was an iPad Mini. That’s it. I’ve never bought a helicopter.’
And why would he when flying comes so naturally?
To go by Aberg’s assessment, as he prepares for his first major at the Masters this week, the past 10 months since he turned professional have been ‘pretty good’.
That is a monstrous understatement for a breakthrough that so far has seen the Swede win two titles, a Ryder Cup and more than £5million in prize money.
Ludvig Aberg's speedy rise through the sport is almost unmatched in the recent history of golf
The 24-year-old Swede will head to the Masters in Augusta rated as a serious contender
That he will head to Augusta rated as a serious contender says everything about the astonishing progress of a 24-year-old who has already reached No 9 in the world and has the look of a generational talent.
The hype has escalated even faster than his ranking. It was only September when Greg Sands, Aberg’s college coach at Texas Tech University, revealed he and his assistant had a private nickname for the prodigy on their books — Ken.
‘As in Barbie and Ken, because this guy can do no wrong,’ Sands said, with our conversation having followed Luke Donald’s decision to hand Aberg a Ryder Cup wildcard, 77 days after his first strokes in the professional game. As Sands put it: ‘With Ludvig, God put together the perfwect human being for golf.’
Aberg, described by one of his PGA Tour contemporaries as ‘very Swedish, very cool in nature’, is utterly bemused by the noise.
‘I didn’t know anything about the Ken stuff until after I got out of school,’ he says. ‘That is just so excessive and over the top.
‘But with the expectations, I know they are there and it’s fine — I’m always going to have higher expectations on myself.
‘You look at the last few months, I’ve always felt like I have the potential to be playing in a Ryder Cup team and to win on the PGA Tour, but within this timeframe, it’s probably been a little bit quicker than I thought. I think one of the key things for me is the people around me keep me grounded. My friends, girlfriend and family speak to me the same way if I shoot 65 or 85.’
To date, there has been no sign of Aberg becoming flustered by his circumstances. Nor of him carding an 85. If there have been moments when he has felt starstruck in gilded company, they have been minor — he describes sharing a Ryder Cup team room with Rory McIlroy as
