Ludvig Åberg spent the first 64 holes of the 2026 Players Championship building a lead that, for much of Sunday, felt like it would be insurmountable. 

Few players look more dominant when everything is rolling than the sweet-swinging Swede. Few players on the PGA Tour can make birdies in bunches better than Åberg, too. When he’s in a rhythm, it looks like nothing can go wrong. He has the most aesthetically pleasing swing this side of Adam Scott, producing majestic shot tracers that seem to be locked in on flagsticks. 

The effortless smoothness of his swing and his calm, cool demeanor create a mystique of invulnerability, which is why his increasingly frequent struggles on Sunday always feel so shocking in the moment. 

Åberg’s latest and most notable came on the 11th and 12th holes at TPC Sawgrass. It’s a testament to Pete Dye’s masterpiece that two holes typically considered among the easiest on the course — a reachable par 5 and a drivable par 4 — presented enough danger to unravel a potential winner’s round before he even got to the dramatic finish. 

After finding the center of the fairway on No. 11, Åberg seemed in prime position to extend his lead over Matt Fitzpatrick back to three shots and begin his coronation walk around TPC Sawgrass’ back nine. Instead, a slicing 7 wood sent his ball sailing into the middle of the pond right of the green. 

That swing, his first real punishment for a mistake all week, begat an unfortunately familiar response from Åberg — one he highlighted as the biggest challenge he’d face on Sunday after his third round. 

“Whenever I get in a stressful situation, I have to slow myself down because I get really fast,” Åberg said on Saturday evening. “I start talking fast, I start breathing fast, and I kind of get, like, a little worked up like that. So, I just have to really calm myself down, try to walk slow, talk slow, make everything just a little bit slower, which is a challenge.” 

That became a prescient comment, as events started to move quickly for Åberg. He couldn’t save par after a solid wedge following his drop, and with a birdie in front by Fitzpatrick, he walked to the 12th tee box, mind racing, without being the solo leader for the first time all weekend. 

That’s where the youthful aggression — that can, at times, be his greatest strength — became the fatal flaw that doomed his Players Championship quest.

Åberg pulled driver on the 12th tee, where most everyone at the top of the leaderboard was laying up into the fairway. Unable to slow himself down, he hit his worst drive of the week — a snap hook that landed in the middle of the pond. It went left so quickly that he had to drop at the edge of the pond, 181 yards away, his third shot bounding over the green. A poor putt from off the back ran well past, leading to a double bogey that suddenly dropped him three shots off the lead. 

“It got away from me quick there,” Åberg said after his round. “Yeah, it was just poor swings. I felt like I’ve had that sort of 7 wood right miss a few times this week, on No. 4, especially, twice, and it came up on 11 as well. Then tried to press a little bit on 12, hitting driver, where sometimes you can play 3 wood a little short of that bunker.” 

Åberg is without question one of the PGA Tour’s most talented young players, but to reach the heights his potential portends, he must learn how to harness all of that unbridled skill. He’s said in the past that if he’s going to make a mistake, he wants to make the aggressive mistake; however, to be a consistent winner, he must learn when to properly time those aggressive efforts. 

Going for the green on the 11th was the right kind of risk to take. Finding that green likely guarantees a birdie, which would’ve put him firmly in the driver’s seat for the win. Even finding the water didn’t guarantee a bogey, as he left himself a makeable par putt with a solid wedge shot after his drop. 

The frustrating part of Åberg’s sudden collapse was compounding that error by pulling driver on the 12th — especially when he knows that his problem in those moments is slowing down. 

The point of the 12th hole is to present a risk-reward opportunity for players, but with the bank left of the green shaved down again all the way to the water, the risk isn’t worthwhile for a player holding the lead. Åberg, even after the bogey on No. 11, wasn’t in a position he needed to chase … but he clearly could not resist that temptation. 

That is his fatal flaw at this juncture. It’s also what made his back nine collapse equal parts stunning, yet unsurprising. Before the week, here is how I felt Åberg’s hyper-aggressive approach was destined to doom him at a course like TPC Sawgrass: 

Åberg still plays with too much reckless abandon to win at The Players. TPC Sawgrass requires a certain level of patience to know where one can attack and where one needs to play conservatively, which Åberg just hasn’t shown. He could post a low round somewhere along the way when he’s in a great rhythm, but he’s not yet ready to string together the four rounds needed to win at Sawgrass. 

Being proven wrong on Sunday would have been ideal. A patient approach to shoot a final round 70 would have been enough to win, showing Åberg has taken a necessary next step to become a serious threat and pile up wins. 

Through 10 holes, it looked like that might be the case. Åberg got away with his first big mistake — a big pull with a fairway wood on No. 4 that got into the trampled rough in the gallery — and then seemed to settle down to play solid golf. He wasn’t taking advantage of the best scoring holes, but he also wasn’t bringing big numbers into play. 

Then it all came unraveled, and he never got it back on track — even as he still had a chance with a flurry to the finish. 

The (multi) million-dollar question for Åberg: How does one learn patience without taking away from what makes them otherwise so great? Experience is famously the best teacher, and Åberg is at least aware of his shortcomings in those moments. Each time he faces such situations is another opportunity to get better and perfect his progress. However, there is also one physical part of his game that can aid in making easier that patient approach. 

Åberg must become a better putter to close out final rounds. While he can get red-hot and go low across any given 18-hole stretch, he’s not the most consistent putter round to round, and his speed control seems to break down in those high-pressure moments. 

We saw it at the Masters, when after Rory McIlroy started backing up on his back nine, Åberg suddenly had a birdie putt on No. 17 to move into a share of the lead at 11 under. He smashed that putt well past the hole, leading to a three-putt bogey, then made a disastrous triple bogey on the 18th to fully eject out of contention. 

We saw it again on Sunday when he tried to putt it from off the green on the 12th and blew it 20 feet past the hole. Åberg is 76th on the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting this season and respectively finished 67th and 86th in that category in 2024 and 2025. When a player doesn’t trust that they’ll make putts, they try to overcompensate by attacking every pin, taking aggressive lines off the tee to attempt short birdie putts. 

Brooks Koepka recently highlighted how he started doing that early this year because of his woeful putting stats; however, given his improvement with the putter, he’s able to play with the kind of conservative aggression that helped him become a five-time major champion. That is the mindset Åberg needs to adopt, but it’s hard to play to the center of the green and leave 20-footers constantly if you don’t believe you’ll make enough of them to win. 

Somewhat ironically, one of the best recent examples for Åberg to emulate — a young player who turned a putting weakness into a strength — is the man who surged past him to win on Sunday, Cameron Young. A seven-time runner-up on the PGA Tour before breaking through with a win last year, Young’s struggles to close out wins were largely fueled by putting problems. 

Young’s putter issues were even more substantial, actually, as he was worse than 145th in strokes gained putting in 2023 and 2024 before flipping the script and finishing 7th in 2025 (unsurprisingly leading to his breakthrough win). Now that putter is something he can rely on in big moments — best evidenced by his 10-footer on the 17th to tie the lead — it allows him to play with that conservative aggression that is the hallmark of the best players. 

It can be easy to forget that Åberg is still in just his third year on the PGA Tour. He has played (and thrived) in two Ryder Cups for a winning European side. He’s contended at majors — including his first Masters — and quickly established himself as a serious threat almost immediately upon his arrival as a professional. 

There’s always a learning curve with young players on the PGA Tour, even for those who go on to become all-time greats, and we’re watching Åberg’s happen in real time. It’s a somewhat unfortunate side effect to his prodigious talents that he’s expected to know how to handle those big moments already, and like Åberg, fans and those of us in the media could also use to learn how to be a bit more patient. 

The path to a breakthrough for Åberg is clear. More confidence in the putter would allow him to adopt a slightly more conservative approach, which would help significantly in calming himself down when things start moving quickly. The real question: How long will it take for him to make those strides and have it all click? 

It could take another year or two. It could happen in just a few weeks. But as inevitable as his Sunday struggles felt this week, so is the feeling that it’ll all fall into place eventually and he’ll start piling up those big wins.