Ludvig Aberg finds himself in another 36-hole lead at the Genesis Scottish Open.
Getty Images/Keyur Khamar
NORTH BERWICK, Scotland — If you’ve spent any time around Ludvig Aberg, you’ve learned at least two of his gifts.
The first is for hitting high, beautiful, arcing, devastatingly accurate golf shots; and the second is for avoiding talking about the first.
Try as you might to get Ludvig Aberg to admit his golfing skill is as brilliant and as jaw-dropping and as effortlessly simple as it so self-evidently is, you won’t get him to admit as much. Not even now, a year into a rookie season that has seen Aberg ascend from “talented collegiate player” to bonafide golf superstar, vaulting into the No. 4 ranking in the world only months after arriving on the scene.
In the Nordic countries, they have a word for this gift. It’s called the Law of Jante — or just Janteloven — described with its own Wikipedia page as a “social attitude of disapproval for expressions of individuality and personal success.” In short, Janteloven is a disaffection for ego — a reminder never to think yourself bigger or better or smarter than those around you.
Aberg has absorbed some of his home region’s scorn for swagger, as he reminded us all too willingly on Genesis Scottish Open Friday, the same day he shot a second-consecutive 64 to steal the tournament’s 36-hole lead. Minutes after finishing another utterly perfect six-birdie, no-bogey performance, he stepped in front of the press and deadpanned.
“I wouldn’t describe myself as a superstar,” he said sheepishly. “All I try to do is play good golf. These last few months have changed my life on the golf course, but they haven’t really changed me. I’m still the same personality, and that’s not going to change in the future.”
This was quintessential Aberg, if a 24-year-old rookie can have quintessence. Deflecting, ducking, downplaying. Grateful to let his golf tell the story, and relieved that the golf has had plenty to say.
And it bears repeating what his golf has said to us in these last 12 months. Like, for example, in his dominant Ryder Cup debut, where the hole seemed watermelon-sized in a European trouncing. Or his first PGA Tour win, a trouncing of the vets just weeks into his rookie season at the RSM Classic. Or his Masters near-miss, when he finished runner-up in his first-ever major championship start, losing only to a flawless performance from World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. Or his rare misfire — his first North American missed cut at the PGA Championship — followed by three straight top-30 finishes and headlined by another wire-to-wire run in contention in a U.S. Open T12.
Aberg arrived at this week’s Scottish Open with his professional golf season of firsts nearing its end. He will travel across the country to Royal Troon on Monday for the Open Championship for his first-ever start in golf’s final major, then head home for his first run through the PGA Tour postseason. When that’s all over, he says, he will take a deep breath around his girlfriend, friends and family. Then it’s off to year two.
“Compartmentalizing is important. Whenever I come home from the golf course I take my work hat off,” he said Friday, grinning as he reached for the bill of his white Adidas cap. “I think it’s very important.”
It might even be crucial. Almost exactly a year after leaving the collegiate ranks, the noise has grown considerably harder for Aberg to block out. He has made nearly $8 million in his debut PGA Tour season — and if the next few weeks go well, he could be looking at more than $10 million in earnings at the end of his first full professional season. His name has gone from unknown to the forefront of the mind of even the most phonetically challenged golf fan. (And let’s be honest: The movie star looks don’t hurt, either.)
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And yet when Aberg speaks about his golf game, he often chooses the same quizzically stoic word: acceptance. Acceptance of the outcome, he says, good or bad. Whether that means having your approach shot struck by another golf ball and rolling off the green, as his did on Thursday, or driving the green on a par-4 to sink your sixth birdie of the day, as he did on Friday. It’s a Buddha-level way of viewing the golf world, particularly for a player only nearing the end of his first professional season. Conveniently, it’s a perspective that also keeps him from thrusting himself into the spotlight.
As Aberg stared down the barrel of another 36-hole lead at the Scottish Open, acceptance meant acknowledging an uncomfortable truth: he is a human being, and his eyes are already a little further down the road. This week comes on the eve of the only major championship won by a Swedish-born player — the Open Championship, which will conveniently return to the site of Henrik Stenson’s triumph, Royal Troon. It’s been circled on Aberg’s calendar for some time now, and for good reason.
“I’ve said many times I think [the anniversary of Stenson’s win] should be a national holiday,” he said Friday, only mostly kidding.
And what about if Aberg were to win the Open at Royal Troon on the same day?
“Then it would definitely be a national holiday.”
Perhaps then Ludvig Aberg will be willing to let his golfing gifts supersede his humility.
For now, though, there’s a different law of the land: The Law of Jante.
Never better than the rest. Even when the leaderboard says differently.
