5 players to look out for in 2024 PGA Golf season feat. Ludvig Aberg
The 2024 PGA Tour season is less than two weeks away, with Christmas, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day in between. The lack of golf tournaments makes the holidays the perfect time to take a look at the main players that will be animating the main world circuit.
The upcoming season will be full of highlights. Golf fans will have the chance to see, for example, if Tiger Woods is able to stay competitive at the highest level, and how Justin Thomas reacts after a very unfavorable 2023.
But undoubtedly, there are names that stand out among all the others, for what they can bring to the golf world during the 2024 season. They are players who, in all likelihood, will demand a lot of space when we are writing the story of the next eight months.
5 players to look out for in 2024 PGA Golf season
The 2022-2023 PGA Tour season had exactly 41 winners, 10 of whom won more than once. This gives the dimension of how many of them are candidates to stand out in 2024, although at least one (Jon Rahm) will not play on the PGA Tour.
Let's look at five players to watch next season:
#1- Ludvig Aberg
Big things are expected from the young Swede, who sealed his PGA Tour star status with nine Top 25s in 12 tournaments, including his first win at the top level. It is even more surprising that it took Ludvig Aberg just six months to achieve those results and, in addition, win the Ryder Cup.
The Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) does not yet show where Aberg really stands in world golf (he is currently ranked 32nd) as he has only accumulated 18 scoring events. This is something that, in all likelihood, will change before too long.
#2- Viktor Hovland
The Norwegian is coming from the best season of his professional career, so the question is how far can he go? Most specialized sites do not argue that Viktor Hovland will win a major in 2024, but which of the four will it be?
Certainly, Hovland only missed one major to round off a historic 2023 PGA Tour season. His results were stratospheric: 18 Top 25s in 23 tournaments, including three victories. He won a Signature Event (The Memorial) and two of the three postseason tournaments (back to back). The juicy icing on the cake were the FedEx Cup and Ryder Cup titles.
#3- Scottie Scheffler
The system used by the OWGR has as many defenders as detractors, but the truth is that being ranked first says a lot in favor of the player who occupies that position. Scottie Scheffler is the top-ranked golfer and by a really wide margin.
Scheffler's OWGR ranking is a reflection of his exceptional season. Scottie did not win his second major, but he did win two tournaments, including THE PLAYERS Championship (the "fifth major"). In addition, his pre-season could not have gone better, winning the Hero World Challenge three weeks ago.
In the Bahamas, the 27-year-old looked very good with the putter, the area of his game that hit him the hardest in 2023. If Scheffler improves in putting, who knows where he can go?
#4- Sahith Theegala
Another youngster set to establish himself as a 2024 PGA Tour star is Sahith Theegala. The former Pepperdine announced his bid for stardom in August by narrowly missing out on the FedEx Cup Top 30 (he finished ranked 31st).
It didn't take long for Theegala to prove that performance was no fluke and he began FedEx Cup Fall by winning the Fortinet Championship. Thanks to this performance, the youngster will be making his debut (at least) at The Sentry and The Masters in 2024.
#5- Tom Kim
At only 21 years old, Tom Kim already has three victories on the PGA Tour, with two of them coming in the 2022-2023 season. Considering that the Korean has his entire competitive maturity ahead of him, a lot can be predicted from him in 2024.
Without making much noise, Kim is 11th in the world ranking and had 15 Top 25s in 22 tournaments last season. Will he be able in 2024 to imitate his compatriot Yang Yong-eun and become the second Korean major champion...?