Apr 16, 2026, 06:59 PM ET<\/p>\n
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — Ludvig \u00c5berg<\/a> swapped out some sloppy mistakes at the Masters with pure iron play at Harbour Town in warm, swirling wind that produced an 8-under 63 for a one-shot lead Thursday in the RBC Heritage.<\/p>\n Aberg moved ahead of Harris English<\/a> and Viktor Hovland<\/a> with an 8-iron to about 15 feet on the back corner of the green on the par-3 17th and made the birdie. He closed with a par, pleasing because he felt that 8-iron confirmed how well he was swinging the club.<\/p>\n Houston Open champion Gary Woodland<\/a>, Matt Fitzpatrick<\/a> and Rickie Fowler<\/a> were in the group of players at 65.<\/p>\n Masters champion Rory McIlroy<\/a> skipped this $20 million signature event for the second straight year, having said Harbour Town doesn’t suit him.<\/p>\n Scottie Scheffler<\/a>, the runner-up last week at Augusta after a 65-68 finish, had a shocking start. His first tee shot was out-of-bounds on the right. He didn’t know out-of-bounds was over there.<\/p>\n “It was looking like it was going to hit those trees and I guess it flew right through them and then hit path and went out-of-bounds,” Scheffler said. “Thumbs up for the start. It was a good bogey.”<\/p>\n That it was, a 12-foot putt to limit the damage, followed by a par save on the next hole and then it was business as usual in the tougher afternoon conditions for a 68.<\/p>\n Aberg had a disappointing week at Augusta National by his standards — a tie for 21st, his first time out of the top 10 in three appearances at the Masters.<\/p>\n “I felt like I was playing well but made some silly mistakes that prevented me from having a real chance,” Aberg said. “But I also felt like in the grand scheme of things, I was swinging it nice, I was moving it nice, so I didn’t have to prepare that much in terms of my golf swing on Monday through Wednesday, and I felt like good golf was in there.”<\/p>\n The challenge for Aberg and the other 52 players who were in the Masters was to stay sharp inside the ropes on an island that makes this tournament feel like a working vacation.<\/p>\n Hovland is feeling less stressful more because of his swing, instead of the week at the Masters when he made a big run up the leaderboard on Sunday only to catch the wrong gust at the wrong time that led to double bogey on the 15th hole. He still shot 67.<\/p>\n Hovland doesn’t feel he’s all the way back with his swing, but he found enough signs of progress to believe he is getting close. He played bogey-free for a 64 that featured no birdies on the three par 5s.<\/p>\n “The whole year I’ve been working really hard, and I think now that I’m seeing my game progress and get closer to where I want it to be, I can start to relax a little bit more and focus on kind of the recovery aspect of things,” Hovland said.<\/p>\n English also played bogey-free for his 64, finishing with a birdie to a front pin over the bunker.<\/p>\n Davis Love III<\/a> refurbished the fabled course to restore greens to their original design, but players felt it looked the same. And it played the same – opportunity from the fairway, trouble otherwise as Scheffler and others discovered.<\/p>\n Justin Thomas<\/a> and Tommy Fleetwood<\/a> each opened with a 76.<\/p>\n The toughest day belonged to someone who didn’t even play. Brooks Koepka<\/a> was the first alternate and showed up at Hilton Head in case someone withdrew. That typically means a two-hour wait in the morning, taking a break, and waiting some two hours during the afternoon wave.<\/p>\n Bad news for Brooks – this signature event has players in twosomes off the first tee, one right after the other. He was at the course about 6:45 a.m. (the first tee time was 7 a.m.) and could not leave until the last group teed off at 2:10 p.m.<\/p>\n There were three alternates on property — Keith Mitchell<\/a> and Taylor Moore<\/a> — because if Koepka got in, the stipulation for his return from LIV Golf was two additional players added to the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apr 16, 2026, 06:59 PM ET HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — Ludvig \u00c5berg swapped out some sloppy mistakes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-588971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}