Ludvig Aberg endured one of the worst breaks imaginable at the Scottish Open

Ludvig Aberg was rolling in the first round of the Genesis Scottish Open: two under through seven holes and two birdies on his last two holes. His good form continued on the tee at the 448-yard par-4 8th from where he found the right side of the fairway, leaving just 148 yards to the front right pin on the blind green. One of Aberg's teammates, Collin Morikawa, already played, hitting a fairway 11 feet to the right of the hole. Aberg must have liked Morikawa's result, because the young Swede introduced a short instrument that followed a line remarkably similar to Morikawa's.

Well, not significantly – indeed.

As Aberg's ball landed on the green, it landed on par to up of Morikawa's ball, the space occupied all 1.68 inches.

“Oh, you don't see that often,” said the commentator on Sky Sports radio. “That should be 1 in 10,000.”

In fact, the odds are much less than that. Figure in a full field event on the PGA Tour there are approximately 150 players who hit the fairways or shortcuts, during four rounds, to 72 greens. That's over 10,000 shots right there, and this is not a phenomenon we see at every event. Whatever the odds, we can agree that they are long!

Ask Aberg, who after his opening-under 64 said of the bogey at 8: “I've never seen it before. I probably won't see it again for a long time.”

And he wouldn't want to see it again, because the result was too expensive. After taking care of Morikawa's ball, Aberg's Titleist kicked hard to the right off the green, leaving him with a side-footed fool. Aberg looked at the fairway, confused. “I thought I hit a good shot, and we just saw the ball go straight to the side,” he said later. “I didn't really know what it was doing, but then we saw that it was where Collin's ball was and I saw his ball go like that.”

That The fairway was off the back of the green, or the new resting place of Morikawa's ball was still unclear, because under Rule 11.1, Morikawa was allowed to replace his ball as close as possible to its original spot. Aberg? No such luck. Play it like a lie, friend.

What would have been about a 10-footer for birdie was now a 47-foot up-and-down effort to save par. Aberg's chip was just too short and par was not to be. He settled for a bogey 5.

To his credit, Aberg took the unfortunate step. “Once those things happen, there's nothing I can do about it,” he said. “All I'm trying to do is make positive changes, and I did.”

Many of them. After paring the par-3 9th, Aberg carded the back 9 in five-under 30 to move up into a tie for third, two back of the lead by Justin Thomas.

Of course, not all football conflicts end in disaster. Witness the final round of the 2016 Masters, when Louis Oosthuizen stepped off the tee at the par-3 16th and hit a shot that stuck between the greens that sent balls down the hole. As Oosthuizen's ball accelerated, it hit one of his teammates, who was resting about three feet to the right of the cup. At first it looked as though the interplay might have cleared the ball for Oosthuizen, but in reality, it went into a much better lane. After a few rolls and Oosthuizen's ball fell into the hole it was the most amazing aces you will ever see.

Alan Bastable

Golf.com Editor

As editor-in-chief of GOLF.com, Bastable is responsible for the editorial direction and voice of one of the game's most respected and heavily trafficked news and services outlets. He wears many hats – planning, writing, imagining, developing, dreaming up one day he breaks 80 – and feels privileged to work with an insanely smart and hard-working team of writers, editors and producers. Before taking over GOLF.com, he was the features editor at GOLF Magazine. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and four children.