That pairing in Detroit was no coincidence. With the Ryder Cup two months away, Donald had six picks to contemplate, and Åberg was the hottest European prospect to emerge from the college circuit since Spain’s Jon Rahm in 2016. A combination of seasoned experience and fearless youth is the perfect blend in a 12-man Ryder Cup team, and Donald had heard that this six-foot-three-inch college champ swung the club like Adam Scott, drove the ball like Rory McIlroy, and had the temperament of Scottie Scheffler. As Greg Sands, Åberg’s coach at Texas Tech, put it, “God put together the perfect human being for golf.”

“He was nine under through 16 holes,” recalled Donald of their first round together, when he announced his 2023 Ryder Cup team at the beginning of September that year. An Englishman who played on four European Ryder Cup teams—on the winning side every time—Donald was preparing for his first crack at captaincy during that round in Detroit. Now, two years after European victory in Rome, he is winding up for a return leg at Bethpage State Park, on Long Island, New York, this September.

“Ludvig made golf look very simple,” he added. “Pretty impressive when he knew I was watching him. He seemed to be very unfazed. When you play with certain players, you can tell. They have a certain talent that you see when they hit golf balls, and you’re blown away, just by the different strike, the sound, the trajectory.”

Åberg shot 65 and 67 paired with Donald over those first two rounds in Detroit. A long shot before those 36 holes, Åberg was now on the short list.

“In the first round in Detroit, I was playing well,” Åberg recalls in an exclusive interview with Kingdom. “Luke and his stats team—with Dodo [Edoardo] and Francesco Molinari—found out that driving the golf ball really well had a big correlation with success at Marco Simone, and my driver stats at that point were really good. I was driving the golf ball very well in Detroit, so that was at the front of Luke’s mind.”

Åberg is coached by fellow Swede Hans Larsson, a partnership that dates back to Åberg’s high school years at Riksidrottsgymnasium Helsingborg, a prestigious boarding school for elite athletes in southern Sweden. For his final two seasons at Texas Tech, he agreed with Larsson that he would be as aggressive as possible with the driver off the tee, to take full advantage of one of his strongest assets. Unbeknownst to the pair at the time, this was exactly what Donald wanted for Marco Simone.

“Thinking back to that summer, I didn’t really have my eyes on the Ryder Cup,” says Åberg, who played four full seasons at Texas Tech. “I felt like it was too far away. All I wanted to do was kickstart my professional career and see where it took me. When I played with Luke in Detroit, that was the first time I had ever spoken to him. Then Luke texted me to say that he would love me to come over to Europe to play in a couple of events, and I got very excited.”

That excitement led to success. “I played in the Czech Masters and finished pretty well [T4], and then the week after was the Omega European Masters in Crans, and that was the first week when I really started to think about the Ryder Cup,” Åberg recalls. “The media attention and chatter started around then, about me possibly making the team, and I really wanted to win a tournament, so I could have that on my résumé if I did play in the Ryder Cup. That was a big carrot for me.”

Donald was due to announce his six Ryder Cup team picks the day after the European Masters, and in Crans-Montana, high in the Swiss Alps, the chatter around Åberg grew exponentially, particularly after a first round of 64, six under par. A second round of 67 was Åberg’s highest 18-hole score of the week, and ultimately, a run of four birdies on the back nine in the final round saw the rookie claim his first professional win by two shots.

“In Crans, Ludvig stepped up when he needed to,” enthused Donald. “Ludvig birdied four of his last five holes to win. That was very impressive.”

Irishman Paul McGinley played on three European Ryder Cup teams—and, like Donald, he was on the winning side every time—before captaining his team to victory at Gleneagles in 2014. “You get talent coming out on tour all the time, but can they do it under real pressure?” McGinley said on the High Performance podcast ahead of the 2023 Ryder Cup. “Playing with the Ryder Cup captain, under pressure, Ludvig performed. Then in Switzerland, Ludvig knew he had to do something special to get picked, and again, he performed. There’s the talent and there’s the ability to perform under pressure, and they are two different things, and when a golfer can blend those two things together, like Ludvig can, that is something special.”

The morning after winning his first professional title, Åberg was called up to the Ryder Cup team. Just three months after turning pro, he set a record as the fastest golfer to be selected for the Ryder Cup after joining the pro ranks. Additionally, Åberg became the first player ever to compete in the Ryder Cup before teeing up in a major.

Former Ryder Cup player and fellow Swede Peter Hanson helps promising players through the Swedish Golf Federation—and he saw Åberg evolve. “The more you shine the light on him, the better he gets,” Hanson says.

“Ludvig is just getting on his road,” said Donald when announcing his team. “He’s just starting to write his history. I think he’s a generational talent.”

The road to Rome

Åberg had not even met most of the European team members by the time they assembled at Marco Simone for a preamble in September 2023. He was duly boosted when Rory McIlroy walked up to him on the first tee and said, “I’ve been looking forward to this for a while.”

But nothing can prepare a golfer for the intense atmosphere of the Ryder Cup. The noise is beyond compare even for experienced pros, let alone for a rookie who’s never played in a major.

“In college, we don’t really play in front of crowds, so it was a brand-new deal for me,” Åberg admits. “I remember getting overwhelmed at times and having to take a couple minutes for myself, just to breathe and to make sure that I was okay. I was fortunate that my first Ryder Cup was played at home, so the majority of the fans were rooting for us, and that made it a bit easier. That crowd made us feel like we were rock stars as we walked up to the tee boxes, and not only had I never experienced that before, but I have not felt it since then either. Even in a major championship, you don’t get that atmosphere.”

One of the highlights of the 2023 Ryder Cup from a European perspective was the foursomes partnership formed by Åberg and Norwegian Viktor Hovland, who was two years older and playing in his second Ryder Cup. The pair won two foursomes points and added another triumph to Åberg’s groundbreaking year by setting the record for the largest margin of victory in an 18-hole foursomes match in Ryder Cup history, dismantling Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka 9 & 7. It was a match of remarkable contrasts. While the home pair posted seven birdies in their last eight holes, the Americans were seven over par by the time the four players shook hands on the 11th green.

When the group reached the eighth tee of that match, Åberg and Hovland were already five holes up. The eighth is a 515-yard, downhill par 4, with water and trouble along the left-hand side. Åberg stepped up to the tee and smoothly crushed his tee shot straight down the middle, far over the 300-yard mark. He set up Hovland for a straightforward mid-iron to the pin, while the desperate Koepka—a five-time major champ, don’t forget—hooked his tee shot into the hay. The score turned to 6-up in a hurry, as Åberg delivered on Donald’s hope for dominant driving.

“I remember walking off the eighth tee and we were pretty far ahead, but in that kind of match-play situation, it is easy to become content too soon,” Åberg says. “You can start to play to protect your lead, and Viktor and I had a conversation that we were going to keep the pressure on, to finish it early and make sure we got a long lunch break. It was really cool to have that mindset and get the point early. It was something that none of us were expecting. Viktor and I put a lot of pressure on by finding a lot of fairways and a lot of greens, and we were never in trouble. Scheffler and Koepka didn’t have their best day, either.”

Åberg posted two points from four games in Rome, and Donald’s faith in the rookie was vindicated as Europe won back the Ryder Cup by a score of 16½ to 11½.

“Until Rome, I had only seen most of my teammates play golf on TV,” Åberg reflects. “The thing is, with the best players in the world, you can’t appreciate just how good they are until you see it right in front of you. You already know they are the best, but I didn’t know just how good they were until that Ryder Cup week. It was cool to see that, when I was playing well, my game was just as good as those guys. That gave me a lot of comfort and confidence going forward.”

By the end of 2023, Åberg had won the RSM Classic on the PGA Tour, becoming the first golfer ever to turn pro and win both in Europe and on the PGA Tour—all in the same year. Then, in his majors debut at the 2024 Masters, he finished runner-up to Scheffler.

“Obviously, I want to be on the team again this year,” he adds. “I had heard that once you have been on one Ryder Cup team, you’ll never want to miss the Ryder Cup again, and that is very true, and that is how I feel about Bethpage this year.”

Åberg is ranked eighth on the European Ryder Cup standings as this issue goes to press, placing him just outside the automatic six who qualify for Donald’s team. A winner at the Genesis Invitational on the PGA Tour in February, Åberg would seem to have a place more or less secured on the 12-man team. If he can win again between now and September, he would leave no doubt. Judging by what Donald has said about Åberg and his game, it is difficult to imagine a European Ryder Cup team without him.