One of golf’s most promising young players says he turned down yet another overture from LIV Golf.
Sweden’s Ludvig Aberg, who played on Europe’s winning Ryder Cup team before competing in a major and captured his first PGA Tour title in November, said on a Eurosport podcast that he is “super confident” in his decision to play on the PGA Tour rather than the LIV Golf League that is run by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
Aberg, 24, said he received the latest LIV offer after finishing his rookie season with a victory in the RSM Classic, where he shot 61-61 on the weekend.
The news of Aberg’s decision comes in the wake of Jon Rahm leaving for LIV, along with a couple of other high-profile PGA Tour players rumoured to be going to the upstart circuit – world No.4 Viktor Hovland and Tony Finau – saying they were staying.
In translated text from the podcast interview, Aberg said, “There were a number of red flags, which is not good. We realised that I could potentially burn a lot of bridges, and I wasn’t interested in that. When I look back, I am very confident in my decision. I will never chase money; what I do is compete. I did the right thing.”
Of course, others, such as Rahm and Brooks Koepka, have taken similar stances, only to eventually leave the tour for LIV.
“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. And that’s what I like, that’s what I go for. But then you have to respect everyone’s decisions.”
A Texas Tech University product who was the first player to earn his card by being No.1 in the PGA University standings, Aberg showed potentially transcended talent by notching eight top-25 finishes in 11 starts. After going 2-2 in the Ryder Cup, his season built to a crescendo with a runner-up in the Sanderson Farms Championship and four-shot victory in the RSM, at which he shot 29-under for the week.
