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SEA ISLAND, GEORGIA | For all five of Ludvig Åberg’s bogeys during Sunday’s final round at the Jones Cup, he swiftly responded with a birdie to offset his mistake.
The last of those five birdies won him the golf tournament in one of the most dramatic finishes the elite amateur event has seen in its 17 editions.
Åberg, a Texas Tech sophomore who arrived to the Jones Cup ranked No. 17 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, hit his approach to 6 feet at the final hole and smoothly rolled in the right-to-left putt to win by one stroke. The tall, blue-eyed Swede came to the 54th hole tied for the lead at 1 under with Alex Fitzpatrick, Davis Thompson and Cole Hammer before hitting one of the best approaches of his life under pressure.
“I was actually pretty calm to be honest,” Åberg said. “I knew at the last I needed birdie to win. All day, I was trusting my game and giving myself opportunities. I just needed to give myself one more.”
The tournament took on a new complexion at every turn during the three days, accelerating into a wild ride on Sunday. Fitzpatrick set the pace with an 8-under 64 on Friday, an unusually low score for an event that tends to be a survival test, but he backed up along with most of the field during miserable conditions on Saturday. The stroke average ballooned to 77.4 in the second round – sideways rain and temperatures in the 40s proved punishing – with Fitzpatrick and Spencer Ralston coming to a share of the lead at 3 under despite enduring multiple bruises to get there.
During the last 18 holes, the leaderboard tightened and a handful of players appeared poised to pull ahead of the pack.
Ralston, the Georgia Bulldog who narrowly missed being on the U.S. Walker Cup team in 2019, pushed his tee ball well right of the first fairway, smacked into a tree with his second and walked away with an opening double bogey to immediately give up his share of the lead. He made another sloppy double bogey at the par-3 fifth and never got himself back into the mix from that point.
Fitzpatrick, the other co-leader, had to extract himself from eight bunkers and displayed imaginative scrambling to stay near the lead throughout the day. He failed to make a birdie the entire afternoon, burning the edges several times on the back nine – had he made his 15-foot birdie attempt at the par-3 17th, he would have taken a one-stroke lead to the last. Alas, Fitzpatrick couldn’t overcome shoddy ballstriking in a round where he only hit nine greens in regulation and routinely had stress to save par.
As the co-leaders lacked juice, two players in the penultimate group stepped forward to challenge for the title along with Åberg. Davis Thompson, Ralston’s college teammate who won the Jones Cup a year ago, and Cole Hammer, the highly touted Texas Longhorn who played on the Walker Cup team two years ago, put together solid rounds. When Thompson birdied the difficult par-4 12th and then used his prodigious length to birdie the par-5 14th, he moved to a 3-under total, two strokes ahead of Hammer, Fitzpatrick and Åberg, who pitched his third shot across the green into the hazard, making a bogey.
Thompson, the highest ranked player in the 84-man field at No. 2, looked like he could cruise into the title, but seldom does winning a Jones Cup ever come that easy.
He airmailed the par-4 16th green, going into the marsh where he took nearly 5 minutes to assess whether he should try to hit his third shot out of the penalty area. He eventually took a drop and did well to get his ball up and down for a bogey, but Thompson proceeded to three-putt at the par-3 17th to make another bogey, falling to 1 under.
Hammer stuck his tee shot close at the par-3 15th to make birdie and reach 2-under par but also made bogey at the 17th when his 8-foot par attempt curled just clear of the hole on the low side. Thompson and Hammer made par at the last, hoping their efforts would be good enough for a playoff.
“Winning this golf tournament, it means a lot. ... This was an amazing opportunity.”
Ludvig Aberg
Åberg, meanwhile, danced in and out of the lead the whole day. His performance off the tee – he hit 11 fairways and consistently gave himself great angles to attack difficult hole locations – was better than anyone in contention. Down two strokes with four holes to play, Åberg channeled memories of an event he had won in Sweden last year under similar circumstances, hitting a close approach to set up a birdie on the 15th, and he suddenly had the lead by himself as Thompson faltered ahead of him.
However, Åberg also three-putted for bogey on the 17th and needed something spectacular at the last to avoid a four-way playoff between a set of players all ranked among the top 32 of the world.
He hit his best tee shot of the day straight down the pipe and took dead aim at a flag tucked behind the left greenside bunker, playing quickly as he had all day.
“Winning this golf tournament, it means a lot,” Åberg said. “It’s a receipt that I’m doing the right things. Just being able to compete against the best guys, last year it wasn’t always a possibility. This was an amazing opportunity.”
The Jones Cup comes with substantial Walker Cup implications this year given that the biennial team event comes four months earlier this year than normal. Hammer’s tie for second is a massive boost to his hopes of making the U.S. team and Thompson is already assured of being at Seminole in May, but no other American in the running to make the squad made noise.
On the GB&I side, Fitzpatrick further cemented himself as a core member of the team. The biggest surprise was Irishman John Murphy who shot a 2-under 70 in the final round to get into a tie for sixth. Murphy had been named to the 16-man provisional Walker Cup squad but was near the bottom of that list heading into the tournament.
Ben Schmidt (T11), Barclay Brown (21), Angus Flanagan (T22) and Matty Lamb (T22) had respectable showings to add to their cases.
RESULTS
Sean Fairholm