Ludvig Aberg is the fifth-ranked golfer in the world and one of Mercedes-Benz’s newest brand ambassadors but not too long ago he was just another college player driving a $2,500 Nissan that leaked oil.
A couple of years and five professional wins later, the 25-year-old Swede will start the Masters on Thursday as one of the favorites. “I realized that, OK, I can actually make a living off this,” Aberg said.
He doesn’t drive the Nissan anymore either, instead a Mercedes-AMG S63 E Performance. That’s a proper ride for a golfer who is being talked about as the next big thing in golf, in part literally—Aberg is 6’4″—but mostly figuratively, a superstar in the making. Golf has high-watt names—Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Bryson DeChambeau, and Brooks Koepka, to name a few—but no one who has dominated like Tiger Woods, still professional golf’s biggest name. Scheffler comes the closest, with 12 top-tens in majors and two wins, including outduelling Aberg last year to win the Masters for the second time.
It is Aberg, though, who has the raw talent to compete at the highest level, and the youth to do so for a decade or more. Just a few years ago, Aberg was still in college at Texas Tech, but in June 2023 he turned professional, and by November 2023 got his first PGA Tour win at the RSM Classic. Aberg played every major as a pro for the first time last year, tying for 12th at the U.S. Open in Pinehurst, and finishing second at the Masters. It was that latter result that put everyone on notice.
Less than a year later, Aberg became a Mercedes brand ambassador, a role that puts him even further into the spotlight this week, as the automaker has long been a global sponsor of the Masters Tournament.
Aberg “doesn’t do anything wrong in his golf swing,” Woods has said. “There’s no little things that he does, and there’s nothing that’s going to stop him from being one of the world’s best.”
That’s high praise for a player who until pretty recently was just trying to finish number-one in the PGA Tour University rankings.
“For me, that was a big carrot to work towards,” Aberg says. “It’s been 190 miles an hour since.”
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Image Credit: Jensen Larson Aberg’s first car in the States was not a Mercedes but, like many a college student before him, an old beater that he bought purely as a means of transportation.
“All through college I was driving this old Nissan car that I bought from a friend for nothing,” Aberg said. “I bought it from an old friend. He was graduating and he was leaving school. I think I got it for $2,500 or something like that and it was leaking oil. It wasn’t the best thing in the world, but it got me from class to practice to home.”
The Mercedes he has now starts at $186,200 and makes 791 horsepower, going from zero to 62 mph in 3.3 seconds. Sweden is home to Volvo, which makes premium cars for sale across the world, but Aberg said Mercedes was always a “step above.” Aberg got his license in Sweden when he was 18, the minimum age to drive legally there, though he recently got an American license too, since he now lives in Florida.
“I remember seeing some family members that were driving a Mercedes,” Aberg said, “and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.”
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Image Credit: John E. Moore III Another change was going from Sweden to Lubbock, ensuring some culture shock along the way. But Aberg said it was a “no-brainer” to come to the U.S. for college, because Sweden doesn’t have the same level of college athletics.
“I have a lot of respect and gratitude for that journey,” Aberg said.
The weather is also different.
“Right around this time of year golf really kicks off in Sweden,” Aberg said, “so [the Masters] is on TV around the time when the weather starts to get nice.”
Aberg missed the cut by two strokes at the Valero Texas Open last week, which may or may not be the ideal preparation for the Masters this week, since players like to have positive momentum and confidence going into a major. On the other hand, having two more days to prepare might provide more time to rest and focus on the season’s first major.
“A major sort of has a little bit of a different buzz to it,” Aberg said. “There’s a bigger atmosphere, and you can just feel like it’s a little bigger. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”
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Image Credit: Michael Reaves Aberg had played Augusta National a few times before competing last year. There was a practice trip a couple of weeks before, and as a freshman in college he played the course just before the pandemic. That gave him a preview of the course, but not in tournament conditions.
Almost every observer was surprised to see him contend on the final day last year, though Aberg said he wasn’t, more impressed with his own ability to compete at the highest level. In person, that comes across as confidence more than arrogance, the sort of confidence one needs to compete with the best players in the world.
Also giving him confidence is that he’s injury-free and recovered from surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee last fall.
“It’s nice to be able to lift the way that I want to in the gym and practice as much as I want to on the range,” Aberg said. “I’m looking forward to a nice season. I’ve got all the tools in my bag and not really compromising as much with things.”
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Image Credit: Warren Little Pace of play has been a hot-button issue in the golf world as of late, in part because of concerns that it might affect the quality of the TV broadcast, and in part because grumbling about slow play is probably as old as golf itself. Aberg is one of the PGA Tour’s quickest golfers, not quite grip-it-and-rip-it, but about as close as a modern pro can get.
“I think anyone who plays the game of golf can attest to” not liking to wait, he said. “We don’t like standing on a tee box waiting. We don’t like standing on the fairway, waiting for the greens players. Ultimately, we would love for it to be a little bit faster, but it’s been around for forever. It’s been a problem for a long time.”
Aberg says Augusta is special for a lot of the reasons that Augusta tries very hard to make itself special. Cell phone use is banned. The scoreboards aren’t electronic. Even the TV broadcast is bespoke. Augusta is, still, the ne plus ultra of golf tournaments, and it’s the major almost every American player says they want to win the most. European players, meanwhile, usually prefer the British Open, though Aberg says that, for him, it’s the Masters.
“You almost travel back in time when you get on the property,” he said. “No one’s got their phone out and everyone’s engaged.”
