No one has ever considered Ludvig Aberg a slow player. He usually doesn’t take too long to make up his mind and drive the ball. But the pace of play warning in the third round of the PLAYERS Championship 2026 may have raised some doubts. And the PGA Tour tried something absurd to clear Aberg’s name. But it only came back to bite them.

The PGA Tour tweeted a video of Aberg driving from the tee spot. They added a timer to the video to show that he doesn’t take too long to complete his stroke. As per the stopwatch, the Swedish pro took about four seconds from getting in position to striking the ball. However, there was one problem with the timer: It was incredibly slow.

Aberg didn’t waste a lot of time transitioning from setting up to completing his swing. Had the PGA Tour shared the actual time, which was nearly twice that of what Aberg took, then neither they nor the 26-year-old would have received any heat. However, their attempt to slow down the timer backfired miserably as the fans caught on quickly.

Understandably, the Tour was trying to take the attention off Aberg. After all, he may be on the path to win their flagship event on Sunday evening. And since he and Xander Schauffele had already been warned for slow play a day earlier, it was vital for the PGA Tour to prove that their possible champion wasn’t a rule breaker.

The PGA Tour’s poor attempt at altering the time didn’t hurt Aberg. But the Tour itself took a lot of criticism for it. Let’s see what the netizens had to say about them.

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PGA Tour faces the heat trying to defend Ludvig Aberg against the slow pace of play

It wasn’t difficult for the fans to figure out that the timer for Ludvig Aberg’s drive had been slowed down. After all, it’s easy for them to figure out the difference between four seconds and nine seconds.

One of them clarified, “PGA Tour: 04:17 seconds. Rest of the world: 9 seconds.”

Someone else also noticed the error as they wrote. “Why would you lie about this? It’s more than twice the time of your ‘stopwatch’.”

In fact, the second comment also included a video with the PGA Tour’s time and a real stopwatch. It showed that Aberg had taken 8.53 seconds to complete his swing. Both of them managed to catch the Tour red-handed with numbers and evidence.

Josh Carpenter from Sports Business Journal said, “No wonder the tour has a slow play issue if this is the timer they’re using.”

Ironically, if this is the timer they were using yesterday as well, then we can’t imagine how long Aberg and Xander Schauffele wasted on the fourth hole to receive a warning. Might be hours in real-world time.

Drawing parallels between the PGA Tour and the European Tour, a fan tweeted, “Thank you for using a clock with actual seconds, @DPWorldTour . An important, and sometimes overlooked detail.”

They also shared a video collage of Aberg’s swing with a timer in the middle. All his drives take about ten seconds to complete. So the PGA Tour’s claims that Aberg has suddenly halved his average time for completing a drive were further disproven.

Lastly, someone commented, “It’s called propaganda.”

They might believe the PGA Tour is forcing the narrative because Aberg is about to win their flagship event. With the exciting conclusion to LIV Golf Singapore that saw Bryson DeChambeau lift the title, Brian Rolapp can’t afford this sort of controversy.