HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC — Ludvig Åberg replaced sloppy mistakes at the Masters with pure iron play at Harbor Town in warm, breezy winds that produced an 8-under 63 for a one-shot lead Thursday at the RBC Heritage.
Aberg moved ahead of Harris English and Viktor Hovland with an 8-iron to nearly 15 to the back corner of the green on the par-3 17th and made birdie. He closed with a par, which is exciting because he felt that the 8-iron confirmed how well he was swinging the club.
Houston Open champion Gary Woodland, Matt Fitzpatrick and Rickie Fowler were among the 65 players.
Masters champion Rory McIlroy has skipped the $20 million signing event for the second year in a row, saying Harbor Town isn’t right for him.
Scottie Scheffler, who finished second last week at Augusta after finishing 65-68, had a shocking start. His first shot was out of bounds to the right. He didn’t know that out-of-bounds was there.
“It looked like it was going to hit those trees and I think it flew through them and then hit the road and went out of bounds,” Scheffler said. “Thumbs up at first. It was really good.”
That was it, a 12-foot putt to limit the damage, followed by a par on the next hole and then business as usual in the difficult afternoon conditions for a 68.
Aberg had a disappointing week at Augusta National by his standards — tied for 21st, his first time out of the top 10 in three appearances at the Masters.
“I felt like I was playing well but I made some minor mistakes that prevented me from getting a real chance,” said Aberg. “But I also felt like in the grand scheme of things, I was swinging well, I was swinging it well, so I didn’t have to prepare as much with my golf swing from Monday to Wednesday, and I felt like the good golf was there.”
The challenge for Aberg and the other 52 players at the Masters was to stay sharp inside the ropes on an island that made the tournament feel like a working holiday.
Hovland is feeling a lot of pressure from his swing, instead of a week at the Masters when he made a big run up the leaderboard on Sunday only to catch the wrong wind at the wrong time which led to a double bogey on the 15th hole. He still shoots 67.
Hovland doesn’t feel like he’s back with his swing, but he’s seen enough signs of progress to believe he’s getting close. He played a bogey-free 64 that included no birdies on three par 5s.
“All year I’ve been working hard, and I think now that I’m seeing my game improve and I’m getting closer to where I want it to be, I can start to relax a little bit and focus on kind of the recovery aspect of things,” Hovland said.
English also played his 64 bogey-free, finishing with a birdie to the front pin over the bunker.
Davis Love III modified the legendary course to return the greens to their original design, but players felt they looked the same. And it played the same way – a chance from the fairway, a problem the other way around as Scheffler and others discovered.
Justin Thomas and Tommy Fleetwood each opened with 76.
The most difficult day is for someone who doesn’t even play. Brooks Koepka was the first to exchange and showed up at Hilton Head in case someone withdrew. That usually means waiting two hours in the morning, taking a break, and waiting two hours during the afternoon tide.
Bad news for Brooks – this signature event has two tiers of players on the first tee, one behind the other. He was at the course around 6:45 am (start time was 7am) and couldn’t leave until the last group left at 2:10 pm.
There were three substitutes on the field — Keith Mitchell and Taylor Moore — because if Koepka had entered, the conditions for his return from LIV Golf had added two more players to the field.
