Since turning professional in June, Ludvig Aberg has been the 20th best player in the world according to our true strokes-gained numbers. He has Top-10'd in almost half his starts (6/13) and won at Crans-sur-Sierre on the DP World Tour. Oh, and he also played on the winning European side at the Ryder Cup.

The odd thing about Aberg is that despite his obvious talent, he has never teed it up in a major. Unlike most elite amateurs, Aberg never qualified for a major prior to turning pro. The quick start to his professional career—punctuated by his presence at the Ryder Cup—has made the lack of a major start even more striking.

Is Ludvig (going to be) the best major championship rookie of all-time?

We have to admit—even as Canadians—this shocked us. Graham DeLaet made it up to 19th in our rankings (+1.3 estimated skill) before making his first major start at the 2013 Open Championship.

Most players on this list fit the DeLaet path of relatively quiet amateur careers, steady improvement as young professionals, and ultimately earning their first major start through the OWGR or by winning on the PGA Tour.

Assuming Aberg goes on to play in a major, Jeff Klauk currently holds the title of best golfer to never play in a major. Klauk earned his PGA Tour card after finishing 3rd on the 2008 Nationwide Tour money list and followed it up with 3 top-5s on the PGA Tour in 2009, but never found his way into a major championship field.

Among active players, Justin Lower, Will Gordon, Alejandro Tosti (

), Kristoffer Ventura, and Seonghyeon Kim are the guys who have played the best golf without yet earning a major start.

Aberg currently sits 53rd in the OWGR. A good finish this week at The RSM Classic would put him inside the top 50 at year's end, securing his spot in the 2024 Masters.

Rankings Update

Max Homa is now 6th in the DG Rankings after winning the Nedbank Golf Challenge, a career high. He’s improved his season-long SG in each of the last 6 seasons, from -2.7 in 2017 to +1.8 in 2023. Homa will need one more year of improvement if he wants to become a regular in our Top 5.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Rory McIlroy	1	—	2	—
Viktor Hovland	2	—	4	—
Scottie Scheffler	3	—	1	—
Xander Schauffele	4	—	6	—
Patrick Cantlay	5	—	5	—
Max Homa	6	4	7	1
Collin Morikawa	7	1	13	1
Jon Rahm	8	1	3	—
Tommy Fleetwood	9	1	15	—
Tyrrell Hatton	10	1	12	1
Notables
Cameron Smith	15	1	19	1
Justin Thomas	27	19	26	2
Alex Noren	47	14	55	7
Lucas Glover	59	12	31	—
Rasmus Hojgaard	87	37	86	5
Akshay Bhatia	106	2	106	2
Robert Macintyre	149	28	57	1
Camilo Villegas	235	90	163	155
P. Khongwatmai	325	66	223	38

Camilo Villegas jumped 90 spots to 235th thanks to his win at the Bermuda Championship. Villegas has gained more than 2.6 strokes per round in his last two starts after only registering two positive-SG events all year before that.

Justin Thomas is back up to 27th in our rankings after falling to as low as 71st earlier this year. He’s gained more than 2 strokes per round in his last 3 starts, propelled primarily by a hot short game.

Player Feature

Alex Noren

age 41 yrs, 4 months

dg rank 47th — owgr rank 55th

weeks in dg top 100 557

dg skill +0.76 strokes-gained / round¹

style elite short game, average ball-striker

career wins
PGA Tour: 0
European Tour: 10

player comps
2020 Charles Howell III (similarity score²: 97.8)
2012 Thomas Bjorn (94.2)
2017 Pat Perez (87.3)

Letzig's Insight
CH3 is a fitting comp for Noren, as both players have gained a ton of strokes in their PGA Tour careers without notching many (or any, in Noren’s case) wins. Among active players, Noren is behind only Tommy Fleetwood in terms of most strokes gained on the PGA Tour without a win. Despite his PGA Tour dry spell, Noren does have a winning pedigree: he won 7 times on the DP World Tour from 2015-2018 before going full-time on the PGA Tour.

1 Relative to an average PGA Tour field.

2 Similarity scores are uniformly distributed from 0 (least similar) to 100 (most similar). Similarity is based on overall skill and playing style over the previous 3 seasons and a measure of career-long performance. Comps are restricted to players of the same age.

Week That Was

Winner	Event	True SG	xWin
M. Homa	DPT — Nedbank Challenge	+4.38	0.926
C. Villegas	PGA — Bermuda Championship	+2.75	0.022
S. Imahira	JPN — Taiheiyo Masters	+1.7	0.0
B. Campbell	ASA — Hong Kong Open	+1.65	0.0
S. Alker	SNR — Schwab Cup	+0.79	0.0

Explainers: True SG, xWins

Max Homa put up his best SG performance of the season, gaining 4.6 strokes per round over a field that had an average skill of -0.2. Scores were spread out at the Nedbank, making it easier to gain (or lose) a lot of strokes. It’s interesting to think about whether this variation in variance should be accounted for in performance metrics.

Ben Campbell was the surprise winner of the Hong Kong Open which featured several LIV golfers. In contrast to the Nedbank, scores at the Hong Kong Open were bunched: 20 players finished within 7 strokes of the winning number. Given the field’s lower average player quality (-2.1), this resulted in a pedestrian True SG figure for Campbell.