Ludvig Aberg gets bad break of the century after approach shot strikes Morikawa’s ball, ends up off the green

In the immortal words of Sam Elliott, sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you. Last time we checked there are no bears in Scotland, but Ludvig Aberg still found himself in the jaws of the beast on Thursday at The Renaissance Club when this lovely, arcing approach landed on playing partner Collin Morikawa’s like an Acme Anvil on Wil-E-Coyote, sending both balls squirming off the green. Watch it and weep.

“That’s gotta be one in 10,000,” says the announcer, but honestly that seems like a conservative estimate. One in 100,000 seems more like it to us. Aberg’s ball has literally 196.9 million square miles of earth to land on and it plops right down on top of Morikawa’s. Probabilities have nothing to do with it. That’s just plain old bad luck.

Them’s the breaks when you’re playing links golf, though. Even when the wind is down, like it was in North Berwick on Thursday, it still finds a way to hose you. It’s not all bad news, however. Morikawa was able to replace his ball at the original spot with no penalty and Aberg now has a chip to cash with Lady Luck when he needs it. That’s not bad leverage to have heading into the final major of the year.