TROON, Scotland—How does one of the best golf swings in the game get that way?
Little by little.
Aberg comes into the 2024 Open Championship playing great golf, but not necessarily feeling especially great about his game.
The tendency is one that Ludvig has had since junior golf: He gets the club stuck behind his body, and swings too much from in-to-out. That causes him to flip his hands, which can send the driver sideways in both directions if he doesn't time it just right.
"It's not a great place to hit a driver from," he says.
Don't worry, though. Ludvig certainly isn't.
Tweaks, not overhauls
Every golf swing—even one as picturesque as Ludvig's—has good and bad tendencies. Ludvig has been combating this since his days playing junior golf (it's where this drill comes from).
"It's not like I'm reinventing the swing or anything like that. It's the same tendencies I've had for a long time," he says. "I'm working on the tendencies. I'm trying to score as well as I can."
The difference between Ludvig and the rest of us is in our approach.
Many amateurs adopt an all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to their golf swings: Don't touch it if you're playing well, tear it all down when you're not. It's either complete rebuild, or bust.
But Ludvig adopts a different mentality: Constantly changing his golf swing little by little, whether he's playing well or poorly. He tries to build a habit, productively tweaking his golf swing every day so it stays in just the right spot.
As he explained:
"Me and my coach, we use the term of like brushing your teeth. You do it every day, and you try to work on it a little bit, a little bit, a little bit so you don't get too far off on one side or the other."
It's a good lesson for the rest of us. You may know what you want your golf swing to look like, but you don't get there with one giant leap. The road to getting there requires lots of little steps, every day.
That's what Ludvig does. He works on his golf swing every day, and he brushes his teeth every day. That's why his golf swing—and his teeth—are so clean.