Viktor is a long way from 2023 victories
Hovland trying to find path back to his best; 2025 takes shape without a deal; Clanton remains red hot
Viktor Hovland struggles to regain his 2023 FedEx Cup champion form (James Gilbert/PGA Tour via Getty Images)
The easy answer is to say that Viktor Hovland should have never dumped his coach.
Why would someone who just had a career year — winning twice in consecutive weeks last August to capture the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup title, among several other impressive feats — make any changes all?
Hovland did, although it’s more complicated than that.
The 26-year-old Norwegian begins play on Thursday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, Tenn., needing a good week just to advance to the BMW Championship, an event he won last year in record fashion a week before claiming the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup title a week later.
This week he’s 56th in FedEx Cup points — the top 50 move on to play next week at Castle Pines in Colorado. Hovland has posted just a single top-10 finish all season (third at the PGA Championship). Even a solid weekend at the Men’s Olympic Golf Competition where he shot 67-68 to tie for 30th didn’t leave him speaking confidently about the state of his game.
“That was kind of just a weekend where I just made a few putts,” Hovland said of the Olympics won by Scottie Scheffler. “I missed on the right sides and I was able to score well. The first couple rounds I hit it about the same, but that golf course is very penal off the tee, and into the greens it really penalizes the bad shots. But if you’re playing well, you can shoot low.
“I just missed it in the wrong spots because I didn’t have that much control over the ball flight. So the second round I was just at mercy of the randomness of where my ball was going. Then over the weekend I made a lot of putts and just was able to score well. That’s always nice, but the quality of the shots were not there. I was still a little upset with that.
“But I’ve been here in the States for a week and spent some good time with Joe, and I feel like we’re on the right track. That’s kind of where I feel like at least the optimism is coming from, just finally getting a good week to practice every day and get into a nice rhythm.”
The Joe he speaks of is Joe Mayo, the coach who helped him win those FedEx Cup tournaments last year, go 3-0-1 for Europe at the Ryder Cup and contend at the BMW PGA Championship as well as the DP World Tour Championship before they parted ways in the offseason.
Hovland has never explained exactly why the split occurred, but he brought Mayo back just before the PGA Championship, where he contended until three-putting the 72nd green and finished solo third.
But he has not been able to maintain that success, having missed the cut in the other three major championships this year.
“I’m not sure how long it’s going to take for me to play my best golf. It might be this week. It might be next week. But at least now I’m on a path to progress. I’m on a path to improvement.” — 2023 FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland
What happened?
“I don't want to get super technical with this, but basically my pattern got off,” Hovland said. “The things that I did in my swing that made me good, that made me able to predict a certain ball flight, I went home and tried to do a certain move, not necessarily because I had in mind that I wanted to change my pattern.
“I knew my pattern was really good. But I was upset that I wasn’t cutting the ball as much as I would have liked. My ball flight started to become a little bit of a draw, which is fine. I was still hitting it good. But sometimes visually I would have liked to have seen the cut.
“Then in the offseason I made a conscious effort to try to cut the ball more, and when I did that, I ruined a relationship that happens in my swing that makes it really difficult for me to control the face coming down. So now it’s just kind of me learning from that. I know exactly why it happened. I know exactly what happens because I’ve gotten myself measured, and now it’s just kind of a process of getting back to where I was.
“But at least I know I have all the data and the facts on the table to go about it.”
Whether he can turn it around in time to advance to the next tournament is unclear. Hovland tied for 13th in Memphis last year.