SAN DIEGO — Ludvig Aberg never felt worse leaving a golf course than at Torrey Pines three weeks ago, when he shared the 36-hole lead in the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open only to get violently ill from a stomach ailment and stagger to the finish with a 79 as he tied for 42nd place.
That’s what made Sunday — same course, different tournament — feel so sweet for the 25-year-old Swede.
Aberg was three shots behind and running out of holes when he hit three shots to near perfection for birdies, then capped his late rally with a seven-foot birdie putt on the par-5 18th for a 6-under 66 and a one-shot victory over Maverick McNealy in the Genesis Invitational.
Aberg, who finished the 72-hole tournament at 12-under 276, won $4 million for his third victory worldwide since turning pro in June 2023 as the top-ranked college player out of Texas Tech.
The Genesis Invitational had to relocate to Torrey from it usual venue, Riviera Country Club, because of the wildfires in the Los Angeles area, and Aberg made good on another chance at one of his favorite courses. It was somewhere toward the end that he turned to caddie Joe Skovron and said, “This Sunday is a lot more fun than the last one we had.”
“Was nice to come here starting to feel like myself again and physically getting there,” Aberg said afterward. “It means a lot. This is the best feeling in golf, and to be able to do what I did today is definitely going to help me going forward in the future.”
He met 15-time major champion Tiger Woods, the tournament host, for the first time a few weeks ago in Florida at an event for the indoor TGL golf league. This moment was better, with Woods presenting him the trophy for his second PGA Tour win, a triumph that takes Aberg to No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
“It’s very reassuring to know that I can go from where I was a couple weeks ago to winning a tournament in sort of a quick turnaround,” said Aberg, who won the DP World Tour’s European Masters in September 2023 and the RSM Classic that November in a lightning-quick start to his pro career.
It was a close call Sunday for McNealy, who won last year’s RSM Classic for his PGA Tour breakthrough. The 29-year-old American looked like a winner at Torrey Pines when he opened the final round with eight birdies in 11 holes — he also had 40-foot par putt on the first hole — and stretched his lead to three strokes.
However, he had to scramble for par on the 17th after a drive that caromed off a pole and into an impossible lie in the rough, and then he failed to convert a birdie on the 18th. McNealy still shot a 64, but still on the course was the Swede regarded as one of golf’s rising stars.
“It’s more than I could have asked for at the start of the day,” said McNealy, who started five shots behind. “Ludvig played awesome. I knew with that leaderboard it was going to take some great golf to get it done.”
Top-ranked Scottie Scheffler was 10 shots better than the third round with a 66 and tied for third with Patrick Rodgers (71) at 9 under.
Scheffler fell five shots behind with a 76 on Saturday, his highest score in nearly three years. That didn’t stop the two-time Masters champion from making a brief run. He went out in 31 with five birdies, including a chip-in on the fifth hole, and got to within one shot.
He couldn’t afford many mistakes at that point, though, and he made two of them. He left a delicate, downhill chip in the rough on the par-3 11th and made a bogey, and after holing a bunker shot for birdie on the 15th to stay in the game, he failed to save par from a bunker on the 16th.
Rodgers and Denny McCarthy, playing in the final group, also took their turns in the lead during the final round until the tough back nine on the South Course caught up with them. Rodgers fell back with bogeys on the 11th and 12th holes and never caught up. McCarthy had the lead when he made an eagle on the par-5 sixth and didn’t make another birdie until the final hole for a 71 to tie for fifth with Patrick Cantlay, Tony Finau and Tommy Fleetwood, with each of those three player shooting a 68.
Two of the four Baylor School graduates on the PGA Tour were in the field, with Harris English (71) tying for 24th at 2 under and Stephan Jaeger (72) sharing 44th at 3 over.
English, who won at Torrey Pines three weeks ago for his fifth PGA Tour victory, missed a chance to join Woods, 18-time major champion Jack Nicklaus and nine-time major champion Ben Hogan as the only players in tour history to win on the same course twice in the same year, with Woods doing it twice. Each of those players won a U.S. Open title for one of those victories: Woods at Torrey Pines (2008) and Pebble Beach Golf Links (2000), Nicklaus at Pebble Beach (1972) and Hogan at Riviera (1948).
Woods, whose 82 PGA Tour career victories are tied with Sam Snead for the record, watched a lot of the action unfold from the broadcast booth. He withdrew from the tournament Monday as he coped with the death of his mother, Kultida, the previous week. Players wore a red button that had the Thai symbol of love to honor her.
LIV Golf file photo via AP / Joaquin Niemann picked up the third individual victory of his LIV Golf League career Sunday, when he won the tour’s Adelaide tournament in Australia.Niemann rallies for third LIV victory
ADELAIDE, Australia — Joaquin Niemann went Down Under to pick up the third individual win of his LIV Golf League career, with the 26-year-old from Chile closing with a 7-under 65 to erase a three-shot deficit and win the circuit’s Adelaide tournament by three shots over Mexican players Abraham Ancer and Carlos Ortiz.
Ancer and Ortiz each closed with a 71, but they finished their rounds in quite different fashion.
Ancer had led most of the final round until Niemann rallied. They were tied with two holes to play when Ancer finished bogey-bogey to fall back and Niemann birdied the 18th hole at The Grange Golf Club to complete the 54-hole tournament at 13-under 203. Ortiz birdied the last two holes.
Niemann won twice on the PGA Tour before leaving to join LIV in August 2022 and becoming captain of the Torque GC team. He was winless individually until breaking through at Mayakoba in February 2024 — where he shot a first-round 59 — then added a second victory at Jeddah a month later.
Sunday’s victory was his second of note in Australia. He was the winner in Sydney at the Australian Open in December 2023, which gave him his lone triumph on the Europe-based DP World Tour.
Fireballs GC, which is captained by Sergio Garcia and includes Ancer, Luis Masaveau and David Puig, won the team competition at Adaelaide. They finished at 21 under, six shots ahead of runner-up Legion XIII. Torque was third at 13 under.
The tour had good news to announce ahead of the final round, with Adelaide retaining hosting rights for its tournament until 2031, despite increasing speculation of a reunification of players from LIV and the PGA Tour and what that could mean for golf’s landscape.
Sunday’s announcement signals LIV’s ambitions to remain a prominent player in world golf.
“There’s no place we’d rather be than right here in Adelaide,” new LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil said.
Adelaide’s hosting contract with LIV Golf had been due to end after its fourth event in 2026, but with close to 100,000 fans attending each of the past two years it prompted the South Australian state government to bid for an extension.
Government officials also unveiled plans Sunday to shift the event from The Grange to a newly redeveloped city course designed by former LIV Golf chief Greg Norman. A central figure in establishing the breakaway tour, Norman will oversee the redesign of the North Adelaide Golf Course, located in the city’s central business district.
“As a golf course designer, you very seldom get the opportunity to be involved with a project downtown,” he said. “North Adelaide Golf Club is basically a diamond in the rough, and we’re going to unpick it.”
AP file photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack / Justin Leonard earned the first PGA Tour Champions victory of his career Sunday, when he won the senior circuit’s Chubb Classic in Naples, Fla.Leonard’s first win on senior circuit
NAPLES, Fla. — Justin Leonard won the Chubb Classic for his first PGA Tour Champions victory, overcoming a slow start Sunday with a back-nine charge on Tiburón Golf Club’s Black Course.
Leonard birdied five of the last seven holes for a 4-under 68 and a four-stroke victory over Billy Andrade, who had the same closing score. The 52-year-old Texan won in his 45th start on the 50-and-older tour, his first victory since the last of his 12 PGA Tour triumphs in the 2008 St. Jude Championship.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve won, and I tell myself all the time that I have won,” Leonard said, fighting back tears on the 18th green. “But it’s easy to kind of forget a little bit, and say, ‘Well, you know, is it going to be?’
“I just put a lot of work in. … I mean, last year was so bad it was good. It was good for me. Made some changes with my golf swing. … It’s just so fun to finally be here, because I always felt like I would be, but it’s nice to finally get it done.”
After a bogey on the 10th hole dropped him to 1 over for the day, Leonard scrambled for a key par on the 11th, then birdied the next three. He scrambled again to make par on the par-3 16th, then got a 30-footer to catch the right edge for a birdie on the par-4 17th and got up and down from a greenside bunker on the par-5 18th for one last birdie.
“I just kept telling myself that I was still in it,” Leonard said. “I felt like my best golf was ahead of me. I played OK the first 10 holes. Eleven, the end of it was good, but it just wasn’t my best golf. I kept telling myself to just own the last seven holes. Once I got a little bit of momentum, I felt like I could ride it.”
Leonard finished the 54-hole tournament at 15-under 201. He shot a 65 on Saturday to take a one-stroke lead and set himself up for the breakthrough victory in his return to competitive golf after a long run as a television analyst.
Leonard has starred at all levels, winning the 1992 U.S. Amateur and the 1994 NCAA Division I title for the Texas Longhorns to cap his amateur career, then taking the 1997 British Open at Royal Troon and making the winning putt in the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline.
“I didn’t think about anything in particular today, but just knowing I’ve been there,” Leonard said. “Even though it might have been 10, 20, 30 years ago, I’ve been able to do it before.”
Darren Clarke (68) finished third at 10 under, while four players shared fourth at 9 under: Fred Couples (66), Richard Green (68), Heath Slocum (70) and Paul Stankowski (71).