Players 2026: Lethal Ludvig seizes lead at TPC Sawgrass by ‘keeping it very simple’

PONTE VEDRA BEACH — When Xander Schauffele finished his second round in the early afternoon on Friday at TPC Sawgrass, he had every right to expect he'd be the story of the day. His 65 was the best round of the tournament to that point, and he held a one-shot lead as the afternoon wave teed off.

Unfortunately for him, that afternoon wave included Ludvig Aberg, and the Swede was on fire from the word go. Anytime you start out five under through four holes, as Aberg did following his chip-in for birdie at No. 4, you have a chance to put up a really special round—the kind where words like "course record" are bandied about. Aberg didn't quite reach those lofty heights, but his eight-footer for birdie on 18 capped off a 63—just one shy of tying that course record—and placed him two shots ahead of Schauffele atop the leaderboard.

It's probably unfair, but there's a slight sense that Aberg, now 26, hasn't quite lived up to the high standards set for him when he broke out in 2023, and that's mostly down to his performance in the majors and big tournaments like these. He's posted two top-10s at Augusta, but missed four of eight cuts overall, and missed the cut at Sawgrass last year. Now, however, he seems to be peaking—he finished in a tie for third last week at Bay Hill—and that momentum isn't lost on him.

"I feel like I've understood a little bit more what's important for me in my golf swing and kind of sticking to that, not necessarily trying to look away other ways around it, and keeping it very simple," he said on Friday. "I think my mind is very good when it's simple, and when things are very easy, and that's what I've felt like I've been able to do over the last couple of weeks."

Aberg copped to the fact that he got away with a few loose swings off the tee on Friday, but everything else about his game was sublime. (Most impressive of all, perhaps, is that he did it playing a twosome with Si Woo Kim after Collin Morikawa withdrew on Thursday—Aberg is a fast player, and had to work hard not to be affected by the significant wait times during both rounds.) After his red-hot start, which he called his best start ever in tournament play, he seemed to hit a holding pattern with four straight pars but broke out of that in a big way with a chip-in for eagle on the par-5 ninth.

His only hiccup of the day came on 15, when he caught a bad lie on a downslope and could only advance the ball 23 inches with a hack through heavy grass. Even then, he saved bogey with a seven-footer and got the stroke back on the very next hole when a massive 354-yard drive set up a tap-in birdie. He capped the day's scoring with the birdie on 18 and now looks forward to a duel with Schauffele in Saturday's final pairing.

If familiarity is an advantage, Aberg will have one over on Schauffele and the rest of his competitors—he lives in Ponte Vedra and plays Sawgrass with some frequency (though he hadn't played the course this year before his Tuesday practice round).

"I've seen the golf course in probably every wind possible, which I know this week we're going to have some different winds," he said. "Is there an advantage to it? Maybe. But Sawgrass is also a golf course where you have to execute golf shots, and I love the golf course because it's right in front of you. It's very straightforward, but you still have to do it."

Aberg is a two-time winner on the PGA Tour, but this weekend is his chance to take the next leap forward in a career surrounded by a good deal of hype. It's not quite a major—not yet, anyway—but the Players Championship is a stepping stone at worst, and it's Aberg's to seize if he can ride Friday's momentum through 36 more holes.