THE MODERATOR: We would like to welcome Ludvig Åberg to the interview room here at the 2025 PLAYERS Championship. Ludvig, making your second appearance. Finished solo eighth in your debut in 2024, and you've since become a Ponte Vedra resident. What's it been like preparing for this championship this year, knowing you've had access to the golf course for the last few months and since October?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, it's been great. We moved here in mid-October of last year and it's been great. I loved it. Play the golf course quite a bit. It's been nice. Feels like anytime we had some visitors coming over, my parents or buddies or something like that, we always try to go play it and got a few rounds in and it's been great.
THE MODERATOR: We'll go right into questions.
Q. The PGA TOUR University system, so far you've won, Karl won last week, came out of that, Luke Clanton got his card through the accelerated program. Matthew Riedel got to the qualifying school last year. Is this primarily a motivator to the college players as a way to get to the TOUR? Is that maybe the primary thing is it just gives you guys something to shoot for other than what the normal process would have been?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, I think so. I mean, the PGA TOUR U team has done a tremendous job of making it possible for us, and I was sort of the first guy to be able to take advantage of it and I'm going to be forever grateful for that. It kind of springboarded my career and gave me a really good start, and you're going to see a lot of guys out of that program who are really good players, really good golfers.
Karl winning last week in his fourth start last week was pretty cool, and obviously getting his TOUR card, as well, so it's going to make college golf better. Ultimately I think it's going to benefit everyone involved, and I'm glad to see guys coming after me having similar success.
Q. How have you settled in living here in your new home in Florida and also having all these extra reps on this golf course? What does that mean to you going into this week?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, it's been nice. TPC Sawgrass is one of my favorite golf courses because it's so straightforward and it's so in front of you but you've still got to hit the shots. You have to execute. If you don't, you're going to get punished real hard. But also, if you do execute the shots you're going to get a lot of opportunities.
So it is one of my -- in that way, one of my favorite courses, and had the privilege to be able to play it now for a couple of months, and yeah, it's cool to be seeing it in all the different winds. Most guys in the field this week, they've played this golf course plenty of times, and I'm not sure it's going to be a real advantage come Thursday though.
Q. Can you tell us how many -- what's the best round that you've had here, your lowest score, and what holes do you really like and what holes do you really hate?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: (Laughing). I think my lowest is maybe 7, something like that. It feels like over the last -- every time I played over the last couple of months it's been cold and it's been blowing about 20, so haven't been very scorable.
But it's a great golf course. I love the back nine. The back nine has got so many good holes. 12, when they move it up, 14's a strong hole, 16, 17, 18's probably the best finish, in my opinion, because you can pretty -- not easy, but you can -- if you hit the shots, you can go 3, 2, 3, but if you don't, you can go 6, 6, 6. So I like that type of golf, and if you want to win this tournament, you have to step up and hit some good golf shots.
Q. Within the last few minutes Tiger Woods has just posted an announcement that he's ruptured his left achilles and he's undergone minimally invasive surgery to repair it. He apparently expects a full recovery. I just wonder, since we just heard the news, if you have a response or a reaction to that?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, that was news to me as well now when you just said it. Obviously it's very unfortunate. But, yeah, I mean I wish him a speedy recovery and hope everything goes well.
Q. How do you feel about your game right now as this and then the Masters approaches, is there any one particular area that you're either uncomfortable with or feel needs work?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: I felt like last week was a great test, and I felt like tee to green it was good enough to post a really good score. I felt like last week what sort of held me back was mostly not really getting the ball up-and-down, not really putting the way I wanted to at times.
Last week was kind of a weird one because it felt like every time I missed a green I made a bogey and it was really frustrating and there was no real momentum. There was no wind in the sails, so it felt like I was just treading water for a while.
So ideally I would like to get that fixed a little bit more. I would like to be able to get the ball up-and-down a little bit more often. I would like to deal especially with the rough -- I felt like from the fairway it was fine, but judging the lies off the rough last week was tricky when it was first it was wet and then it got dry and then the changing in conditions. So I would like to get that a little bit better.
But overall tee to green I felt like it was good enough to play well.
Q. Unrelated, the first time you came here for the tournament last year during a practice round, did you ever go to the drop area on 17 to practice?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: No, I didn't.
Q. Are you one that would ever go into a, whether it's the mean, we'll have the church pew bunkers at Oakmont or just different areas of trouble that you might find during a tournament? Why wouldn't you go there, is it a mental thing or what?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, it's a good question. I actually, I've never practiced a drop or a drop zone shot. I guess it would probably be good, in case that happens, but yeah, I've never done that here and I probably won't do it in the future either.
Q. You have always had such a refreshing, quick matter-of-fact approach to your swing. Has your form always been like that, did you grow up with the exact same kind of speedy approach?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: I think so, in my younger days (laughing). I played a lot of golf when I was growing up. I never really practiced, so I guess it was a big deal -- I was raised the way to you don't want to be waiting a lot when you're playing golf. You want it to be sort of fast paced when you're walking and when you're playing, so I was never really a slow player when I was younger either, and that kind of stuck with me. I think it's an important part of our game to sort of keep the speed up, and I guess it comes natural to me and I like to sort of keep it that way.
Q. Is it tough for you to play with slower players because of your pace?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: No, not really. I don't really think about it. At the end of the day, it's my routine and that's the most important thing to me. You might have to walk a little bit slower or tell one more story to Joe, my caddie, but other than that, it's not really an issue for me.
Q. There's a great scene in the Netflix show of you and Joe sort of charting almost every shot at Augusta National last year. Is that something you did basically every week last year, or did you reserve that for some of the bigger events?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, we meet up before every round that we play, tournament round, and we sort of go through the wind for the day and sort of the pins and where to leave it and where not to leave it, and just the strategy of it.
I like to do that so that every time you step up on a tee box you know exactly what you're going to do and you've had conversations about it, and it kind of takes away all the uncertainty between a caddie and a player.
But, yeah, we did it a lot at the Masters. I relied a lot on Joe that week. Obviously had a lot more experience on the golf course than I had. He gave me a lot of knowledge and I trusted that.
Q. I saw you called this a top-five golf course in the world last week. Could be a controversial take depending upon who you ask. Just curious what are your other four are.
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Oh, I haven't thought about that. I think I need a little bit more time to compose a list of that. But for me, Sawgrass is definitely one of those.
Q. You mentioned Karl Vilips earlier. How well do you know him and have you spent any time with him or playing golf with him?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, we've, we never really played in college. It felt like every time Texas Tech played with Stanford I always played with Michael Thorbjornsen so we never really were paired together, but then he lives in the area, too, so we were out playing. I remember we played Dye's Valley, the other course here at Sawgrass, and it was cold, it was windy and he shot like 8-under or something like that, and I'm like, okay, he can play. And he's a really nice guy. I like him a lot. He's going to play a lot of good golf on the PGA TOUR.
Q. For someone to win their third start as a member coming off an injury like he did, how impressive is that?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, it's really cool, especially with missing a few events early on, getting his TOUR card last year, and having to deal with I guess a setback, which is not always easy, and seemed like he seamlessly sort of transitioned into playing and practicing and not only playing golf but playing really good golf too, and getting his first win is really cool.
Q. You give the impression of being very much in control of yourself and very content with yourself. When was the last time you did or came across something that got you going, and what are some of the other things that get you going?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: That gets me going in a good way?
Q. Yeah. Either, any way you like, on or off the course.
LUDVIG ÅBERG: (Laughing). Yeah, I would like to think I'm very consistent in the way that I treat a lot of things, not only on the golf course but off the golf course too. I like to keep my friends and family very close and I don't expect a ton from a lot of people, apart from the people that are close to me.
Last week I was really frustrated. At one point I even threw a ball in the water, which was kind of surprising to myself, but I missed this super easy up-and-down and I got pissed and that don't happen very often but it did last week, so I lost it a little bit there. But other than that, I would like to think I'm pretty good to control myself.
Q. Off the course?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I get nervous when there's football on the TV, when there's other sports playing, but other than that I'm pretty consistent.
Q. Soccer you mean or American football?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, soccer.
Q. Why do you get nervous about it?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Liverpool when they play. I want them to win. I've always wanted them to win. And, yeah, I'm just into it.
Q. Four minutes until the real sporting event of the day, as I'm sure you know.
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, that's right.
Q. Can you talk about, is football like an outlet for you in some way?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: A hundred percent. It is. It's always been, I mean, I played a lot when I was younger and it's always sort of been something that I like to do with my friends and on my spare time. For a long time football was my No. 1 over golf, but yeah, I still watch a lot of football, every weekend if I'm home. It's sort of -- I was a little bit confused at first when I moved over here because obviously the time changes and I was so used to having the football in the afternoon, but I sort of like it now in the mornings. You can sort of wake up and have breakfast and watch the game. I like to do that over the weekends if I'm home and, yeah, it's definitely an outlet.
Q. I want to know how nice it is to be comfortable in your surroundings, driving from home to the tournament instead of maybe a hotel or Airbnb and maybe your favorite spot to eat in Ponte Vedra Beach?
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Yeah, it's been a little weird. The last time I stayed at home -- I was talking to a friend -- I played a high school tournament about 10 years ago, that was the last time I stayed in my own bed for a tournament. So it's a little different, but I had my mom coming in a couple days ago, and my dad's coming in tomorrow. So it will be fun to hang out with them in a home setting, but as well as at a tournament, so it will be really cool.
And there's a couple of good spots, especially if you go a little bit further up north in Neptune and Atlantic Beach there's a lot of nice places to go eat.
THE MODERATOR: All right, Ludvig, thanks for the time, best of luck this week.
LUDVIG ÅBERG: Thank you.
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