For defending champion Ludvig Aberg, the return to the $20 million Genesis Invitational is being haunted by a familiar and concerning health scare.

“It was a little annoying early in the season. I obviously felt fine the first couple of days at American Express and actually very similar to what I had about a year ago at Torrey, where I just woke up in the middle of the night. And I’m not going to get into details, but it wasn’t pretty. Yeah, it’s just kind of been bugging me a little bit since,” Aberg told the media, ahead of Tiger Woods’s hosted event.

During last year’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, Aberg held a share of the first-round lead before a sudden nocturnal illness struck. He described waking up in the middle of the night to violent vomiting, an experience that cost him between eight and ten pounds in just forty-eight hours. Despite the severity of the symptoms, which evolved into a high fever and body aches, Aberg attempted to play.

He finished T42, but the issue persisted into the following week at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He was ultimately forced to withdraw from there. Surprisingly, all of this happened just two weeks before Aberg witnessed a miraculous turnaround, returning to win the 2025 Genesis Invitational and winning the event with a 12-under-par total. Now, he is defending his title, and his symptoms are reappearing, but he is working closely with medical experts to identify the root cause of these problems.

“I’ve obviously been in contact with doctors, and we’re sort of doing some gut health investigation, if you will. Yeah, I do feel much better now than I did back then, which is obviously positive,” Aberg added.

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The results of this improved health management are also starting to show in the course. Though he withdrew from American Express and missed the cut at WMPO, he showed resilience at Pebble Beach. A disastrous opening-round 75 left him buried on the leaderboard, but Aberg showcased the grit of a champion by clawing his way back. He fired off consecutive rounds of 69, 66, and 67 to finish 37th,

Most importantly, Aberg holed out from 138 yards for an eagle at the 10th hole during this comeback. He also nearly made an ace on the par-3 seventh hole after sticking his tee shot close. These great moments show that the defending champion is finally finding his rhythm after a bumpy and uncomfortable start to the season.

And his health is not the only thing changing for the better in this strange 2026 season. While fighting his stomach issues, the Swede also became a pioneer for a brand-new rule in the PGA Tour.

Ludvig Aberg makes history with a cracked driver

Amidst his health recovery, Aberg became a ‘small slice of rules history’ at Pebble Beach by becoming the first PGA Tour star to benefit from a major 2026 rule change regarding damaged equipment.

Previously, if a player cracked a club, they could only replace it if the damage was considered very significant. Even then, the caddie usually had to run to the locker room to fetch a brand-new one. This rule often caused lengthy delays, forcing players to continue with a damaged club while a replacement was retrieved from the locker room. Everything changed at the start of 2026 when the PGA Tour finally updated the rules.

Players can now carry spare parts as driver heads directly inside their golf bags during the round. If a rules official confirms a visible crack, the player can replace the broken part right there. This allows for an immediate fix so the game can continue without any annoying or long interruptions.

Aberg became the first star to benefit from this change. During the third round at Pebble Beach, Aberg hit a drive out of bounds on the 18th hole (his ninth of the day) and noticed a crack in his driver’s face. Under the old rules, he would have played several holes with just a 3-wood while waiting. Instead, his caddie, Joe Skovron, reached into the bag and pulled out a backup driver head immediately.

“I had the backup in the belly of the bag,” Aberg’s caddie Skovron noted.