For players like Wesley Bryan, this week’s Bubble Boy at No. 125 on the FedEx Cup Fall points standings, the RSM Classic at Sea Island Resort in St. Simons Island, Georgia, represents the end of the line to secure full exempt status for next season on the PGA Tour.
This is the final of eight Fall events for players to work their way into the top 125 (Nos. 126-150 receive conditional status). Otherwise it is a trip to Q-School or a demotion to the Korn Ferry Tour. Jobs are on the line this week but for the defending champion Ludvig Aberg, this week marks more of a new beginning.
The 25-year-old Swede capped off a remarkable rookie campaign last year by winning the RSM Classic in just his 11th professional start and doing so in record fashion: tying the Tour’s 72-hole low scoring mark of 29-under 253.
RSM: Thursday tee times | Odds, course history
Aberg avoided a sophomore slump, finishing second at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Masters and finishing 16th at the Tour Championship in August, but he also dealt with a left knee injury that required arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn meniscus on Sept. 5 in New York. Aberg’s title defense marks his first start in three months and his longest stretch without playing golf.
“It’s been quite nice. I had surgery on my knee, so I had about four weeks off from golf. The first two weeks I did not miss it at all, I’m not gonna lie, but last couple of weeks it’s been itching in my fingers quite a bit. So it’s been nice to get back into practicing, playing a lot more at home,” Aberg said on Tuesday during his pre-tournament interview.
Aberg withdrew from the Wells Fargo Championship in May, citing a knee injury, and after consulting with doctors continued to play the rest of the season knowing that surgery was in the cards. But he conceded that it hindered his game the back half of the FedEx Cup regular season and playoffs at least on the greens.
“I couldn’t read the putts the way I wanted to. I couldn’t really squat down, that’s when it really hurt,” he explained.
After undergoing surgery on his left knee, he spent the first couple weeks in New York doing rehab and seeing the sites.
“Luckily, I was still able to walk, so me and my girlfriend were in New York and we were doing the city a little bit and kind of acting like tourists, so that was fun. Then we bought a new house and it’s been a lot of house stuff lately.”
Aberg previously had been renting a room from fellow countryman and Tour pro Vincent Norrman in Tallahassee, Florida, but purchased a place with his girlfriend in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, not far from TPC Sawgrass and the Tour’s Global Headquarters. Of becoming a homeowner, he joked, “kind of getting old and getting a lot of grownup points in that space.”
Aberg made the short drive across the Georgia border to this picturesque corner of southern Georgia – halfway between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida – where he not only won the RSM Classic but also the Jones Cup, one of the premiere amateur events in the country. Can he recapture his usual magic in the Golden Isles?
“I feel 100 percent, otherwise I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “And yeah, I had about four weeks off from playing golf, I didn’t touch a golf club. Started hitting short pitches and wedges at first and then to kind of load it a little bit more and put more pressure on it. Now I’m actually a little bit stronger now than I was before, so that’s good.”