Before we bury the guy, let’s take a minute to appreciate Ludvig Aberg.
In just his second Masters, the Swede had a chance to win again on the final nine holes on Sunday. Aberg found himself in a three-way tie for the lead after Rory McIlroy’s double bogey-bogey stretch on 13 and 14.
After Aberg birdied 15, he would’ve needed just one more birdie on his final three holes to join McIlroy and Justin Rose in the playoff. That’s heady stuff at a course where experience usually matters so much.
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Of course, he did not join the playoff. In fact, after a bogey on 17, the 25-year-old would’ve needed to hole his second shot on 18 to join Rose and McIlroy. He certainly did not do that. He left his second shot in the fairway bunker on 18, then found the right greenside bunker with his third. It was a bit of disaster all around, hitting his shot over the green, then across again, before settling with a triple bogey.
All those extra strokes cost him a ton of money at the end of the day. Assuming the Swede made par on 18 to tie for third place with Patrick Reed, he would’ve padded his Masters paycheque by an extra $514,500 ($A8123,000).
If he’d have made par on 17 he’d have collected another $724,500. Even for a star like Aberg who has netted nearly $20 million in his young PGA Tour career, that’s a ton of dough. His cheque for finishing solo seventh ended up being $703,500.
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Reed should send Aberg a nice bottle of wine, as the LIV golfer’s paycheque would’ve decreased by more than $200,000 had Aberg tied him for third.
Of course, this sort of result happens every week on the PGA Tour – when contenders falter late on a Sunday. But it’s not very often we see a contender really struggle on the 72nd hole the way that Aberg did on Sunday. We’re confident he didn’t think much about it, as these PGA Tour players make so much cash as it is, but still, to most of us … that’s an eye-popping amount of cash.
