Half of the European Ryder Cup team competes for the BMW PGA Championship
BMW PGA Championship 2023 is expected to complete the final round on the night of September 17 Hanoi time, with the championship possibly belonging to one of six names, including Ludvig Aberg, Tommy Fleetwood, Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Sepp Straka, Viktor Hovland.
In this final stage, Aberg, with a lead of -16, will start last with the T2 duo - Fleetwood and Syme Connor, both -14. Meanwhile, Rahm -12 and Hatton -11 are ahead of the penultimate group, right behind Straka and Hovland. Straka is also -11, and Hovland is -10. The competition for the championship is even tighter, when the points band from Aberg to Hovland has nine full-time players on the DP World Tour.
This is the situation after the tournament ended round 3, on the par72 course at Wentworth Golf Club in London. Yesterday, Aberg did not bogey when going from holes 1 to 12. In this part, he scored an eagle and three birdies. After bogey hole 13 and falling to -14, he earned two more points through the remaining stretch, including reaching -16 with birdie hole 18, thanks to bringing the ball from the sand trap close to the target.
Fleetwood played right before Aberg, closing the round with a par score to hold -14 and be level with Connor. This player kept par in both final holes of the round, finishing nearly an hour before Fleetwood.
At the end of the competition for the BMW PGA Championship this period, Fleetwood, Rahm, Straka, Hatton, Hovland are in the "upper" category, shown by many cups on the PGA Tour or DP World Tour. Rahm alone has owned two majors and held the world number one position several times (OWGR table) while Hovland was recently crowned champion of the entire US first-class arena 2022-2023, by holding the FedEx Cup last month.
And Aberg and Connor are ranked lower. Connor is 28 years old, a Scot who has never finished first on the DP World Tour and is ranked 149th in the world. Compared to Connor, Aberg, a 23-year-old Swede, is more appreciated because he has only been playing professionally for more than three months and has risen to 91st in the world, and has a cup on the DP World Tour, at the Omega European Masters two weeks ago.
After the BMW Championship, Aberg will play for the European team to compete in the 2023 Ryder Cup against the United States at Marco Simone Stadium in Rome from September 29 to October 1. Aberg's teammates include Fleetwood, Rahm, Hatton, Straka, Hovland, Rory McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick, Justin Rose, Nicolai Hojgaard, Shane Lowry and Robert McIntyre.
