THE MODERATOR: Please welcome to the interview area Ludvig Åberg. 1-under 69. Talk us through your round.
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, absolutely felt like I hit it very nicely today. It was obviously very challenging, and it's not an easy golf course to play. But I felt like we stayed very disciplined, stayed very patient, and tried to hit it to our targets all the time and see how many golf -- we said beforehand see how many good shots we can hit today and see where that ends up at the end.
Q. Your first U.S. Open; how has it stacked up to your expectations in terms of how tough the course plays?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, absolutely. I think obviously this being my first one, I think a U.S. Open is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be tricky, and it's supposed to challenge any aspect of your game. And I feel like it's really doing that. But super fortunate with the way that things have turned out over the last couple days, and hopefully we'll be able to keep it up.
Q. Prior to this week, what would you say was the most difficult course you've ever played in your life?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: I mean, prior to this week it was Pinehurst because I played the U.S. Amateur here a couple years ago. I think just with the way those greens are, when it gets really firm, and just because you don't really have any bail-out areas, you've just got to take on the golf shots and see where it ends up, and if you don't pull it off, you're going to have a really tricky short game shot.
I think it's a challenging golf course, but once again, that's the way it was supposed to be.
Q. How is this week compared to the U.S. Amateur experience here?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Well, it was a while ago I played, but I remember it was one of my first experiences coming over and playing a really hard golf course in America, and I was like, Is this what golf in America is like? Luckily it's not like this every week.
But I just remember it being very hard.
Q. It's been a meteoric last 12 months for you. How much are you enjoying life right now, and how would you describe the journey over the last year?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, absolutely. It's not something that I'm thinking about all the time, but sometimes I have to stop for a little bit and think about how fortunate I am to be able to do this at this level.
I also feel like I have a very good team of people around me that I trust a lot, and hopefully we'll be able to do this for a long time.
Q. Do you ever sort of pinch yourself in disbelief sometimes?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, I think so. To be able to play these tournaments, to be able to play with the guys that I've watched on TV for such a long time is definitely a pinch-me moment, yeah.
Q. I don't think you missed a fairway yesterday, and you went a few holes today without missing one. When you finally make a mistake, is there any kind of reset mentally you have to do, or do you just kind of chalk it up as I have a lot in the bank?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: I see what you mean. Yeah, I think we did some work early in the week, me and my swing coach. He's here with me this week. He normally lives in Sweden. I don't get to see him that much. We did some work. As a golfer, you're always going to have tendencies. You're always going to have something in your swing that you're going to work on. And that's the case for me, as well. We worked on those tendencies. Sometimes it just shows up. You can't be perfect all the time.
At least we have sort of the knowledge to kind of bring it back to where we want it to be. Sometimes it takes one shot, sometimes it takes a little bit more, but I feel like we handle that very well.
Q. John Bodenhamer said earlier this week he wanted all the players to get all the clubs in their bag dirty, including the one between their ears. I was wondering, being the first experience here and just the tendency to maybe have some bad shots, how are you keeping your focus? What do you keep in mind? What do you do? How are you handling that mentally, and how do you maintain and keep your consistency?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, definitely. It's a demanding golf course, not only physically but mentally, as well. It demands a lot of discipline and patience coming into these greens.
I think I just have to play with a lot of acceptance. I have to make sure that it's not going to be perfect all the time. Most likely all players in the field are going to have a struggle at some point during the round, and whenever that shows up, it's just one of them.
All I try to do is execute the golf shots as good as I can, and then if I do so, that's great. But if not, we just deal with it, try to get back into position as soon as we can, and try to get the ball in the hole.
Q. Having played college golf in the U.S. and played here in tournaments for the past couple years, how is your view on international golf changed?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: International golf in terms of --
Q. Just in the internationalization of the sport itself.
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, I've been very fortunate to have seen different parts of the world, I guess, in terms of golf tournaments. Grew up in Sweden where golf is, I guess, not as big as over here, but it's still very passionate golfers.
But yeah, obviously since I came over for college, I've experienced a lot of really cool places in America, a lot of very cool situations and environments that I feel very fortunate to have those experiences.
Obviously I love playing golf at home, as well. It's very cool.
Q. After being in contention at Augusta earlier this year, are there any lessons or any takeaways that you have that you can apply to being in the weekend and hopefully being in contention all the way through the rest of Sunday?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, I think so. I think Augusta proved to me that I was able to be in that position, and it was more of a justification of like, yeah, you can actually be there and contend on a Sunday. Then obviously the golf course also played very difficult. It demanded a lot of patience and discipline just like this one does.
Yeah, I feel like those experiences that I had back in April, they were great. Hopefully we'll draw some similarities between those.
All we try to do is just hit the shots as good as we can and then see where that ends up.
Q. To go back to that amateur experience for one more question, how much harder has the course been playing this week than when you played here?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: My memory is not great, but I do remember -- maybe I've gotten used to harder courses a little bit, as well. But I do remember having a few of these where you feel like you hit a good shot into the green and it rolls off the side and you have a really tricky shot coming back.
I do think a USGA setup at Pinehurst is going to be very tricky, no matter if it's a U.S. Open or a U.S. Amateur.
Q. This is a course that demands a lot of creativity and different short game shots around the greens and things like that. Is there a particular shot that you've kind of leaned on around the greens this week that maybe you learned how to play the last few years?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Well, I've been using my putter quite a bit. I think the putter just makes it easy. Unless there's an obvious advantage of using spin or something like that, I think we try to go to the putter as soon as we can because of the difficulty level of the short game shots. Unless you have a fairly straightforward -- all you try to do is get it to somewhere between 8 and 15 feet just to get a putt coming back.
I feel like it's easy to try to get cute with it. It's easy to try to see the perfect shot. But sometimes the perfect shot is eight feet left of it, even though it's a short game shot.
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