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