Hovland’s satisfaction never guaranteed

Norwegian star keeps searching; LIV’s truncated season ending; Reed’s big fall plans

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Viktor Hovland celebrated Travelers win doing Viking row with Norway fans (Ben Jared/PGA Tour via Getty Images)

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Viktor Hovland is all smiles, even amidst his various struggles. The video that will often emerge from his homeland in Norway of Hovland simply having a ball with his friends on a local muni says a lot about his personality, and how much he loves the game.

His candor is refreshing as well. Hovland admits that he is rarely satisfied. Even in victory, he can amazingly find something to fault. It’s funny in a way, and he acknowledges as much, but says he wouldn’t be as successful if he was satisfied with what he knows is not his best.

Hovland, 28, is already an eight-time PGA Tour winner. He won the FedEx Cup in 2023 and parted with his coach not long after. He won the Valspar Championship last year and complained about his swing. He took down Scottie Scheffler earlier this year in a playoff at the Travelers Championship and fretted about what he did wrong.

He enters this week’s BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club searching for something he recognizes that he might not ever attain.

“I think being really hard on myself is one of the reasons why I’m here,” said Hovland, who is ranked No. 14 in the Official World Golf Ranking. “It’s just I’m always pushing like I remember even in junior tournaments in Norway and I like shoot 1-under par and win, be super exciting, but I would always think like, ‘Okay, if I played an amateur tournament would I have won? What would I have needed to do better today in order to win the next time around?’

“So it’s like you’re always thinking like how can this get better and better and better. And if I hit a terrible shot and get lucky and make a birdie, it’s like, ‘Okay, well the next time, if I’m not lucky … you know.’ You always got to think that way. Especially when I know how good it can be, it’s even more frustrating when you don’t execute the way you want to.”

Also in today’s DD …

• LIV drama doesn’t end even if season will this week in Indy

• The ‘Western’ goes east, west and everywhere in between

• Reed will retain focus on DPWT even though he’s now PGA Tour eligible

Hovland enters this week 22nd in the FedEx Cup standings, which means he is virtually assured of making it to East Lake next week for the Tour Championship.

It was three years ago that Hovland went on an epic run, winning the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields then capturing the Tour Championship the following week to win the FedEx Cup. Throw in his victory earlier in 2023 at the Memorial, a tie for third at the Players Championship, top-10s at the Masters and PGA Championship and a tie for 13th at the Open Championship, and it was an amazing year. And that doesn’t include a starring role for Europe at the Ryder Cup in Rome.

Then he changed coaches and his swing and it took 18 months for Hovland to win again.

“Looking back I would say that it was more I was content with my game my whole career up until 2023 in terms of my ball striking,” Hovland said. “But it was always trying to nitpick and trying to find places where I can improve. Now with kind of the struggles that I’ve had the last. I would say three years, where my ball striking has just been drastically worse you take a little bit for granted how good it was before. But I do think like without having that mindset of trying to improve, I wouldn’t have gotten out here. I wouldn’t have had the career that I’ve had up to this point.

“Obviously I would like to play like I played in 2023 every single year, but it’s not like you can just put it in neutral and keep playing like that the rest of your life. Like you’re always fighting entropy, there’s always stuff that’s going to be tossed at you and you got to deal with those problems. So I’m feeling pretty confident that we’re going to get to that point, it’s just I need to also give myself some time to work on the right things and then get back to playing the golf that I know I can.”

LIV drama never ends, though season will in Indy

LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil is scheduled to speak to the media on Wednesday in Indianapolis and he’s got some big questions to answer in addition to any update he gives about the future of the league.

Sports Business Journal reported Tuesday that LIV has yet to pay players prize money from the LIV Golf New York event that concluded on Aug. 9. Typically players would have received funds on the Tuesday or Wednesday following the tournament.

And Front Office Sports reported that among several entities that are owed money by LIV Golf is a production company that put on its season preview event that featured all the teams and players.

Meanwhile, what is now the season-ending event in Indianapolis this week has a new twist. Instead of the usual purse of $30 million which includes $20 million for the individual portion and $10 million for the team part of the competition, LIV is taking the $40 million purse that was supposed to be used next week in Michigan — officially canceled on Monday — and making that the purse this week.

But the payout is different. Only $10 million will be paid as part of the individual competition with $30 million going to the 13 teams simply based on the order they finish in Indy. The winner of the team competition this week will be declared the season-long team winner. Jon Rahm already clinched the individual title last week, yet he was not pictured in a social media post hyping the event this week.

A word from our sponsor . . .

This this week’s Daily Drive newsletter is being brought to you by the Western Golf Association and the Evans Scholars Foundation, which has been sending caddies to college since 1930.

The WGA, which was founded in 1899, sponsors among its events the BMW Championship, which is being played this week at Bellerive Country Club near St. Louis. The proceeds from the tournament benefit the foundation, which now supports 1,310 students attending 28 universities.

The tournament has a long history and was known for years as the Western Open. It began in 1899 and for approximately five decades was viewed as a “major” tournament, moving around the country similar to the U.S. Open. For a time, the Western Golf Association was its own rules-making body and a rival to the United States Golf Association, eventually shifting its focus to its caddie scholarship program.

In the early 1960s, the Western anchored itself in Chicago, playing at such venerable courses as Medinah (site of this year’s Presidents Cup), Olympia Fields and Beverly.

Starting in 1974, the tournament made its home at Butler National Golf Club outside of Chicago before moving to Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in 1991.

When the tournament was rebranded the BMW Championship as part of the FedEx Cup playoffs, the idea was to take it out of the Chicago area — a move that has proved to be successful. The first time it did so was in 2008 when it came to Bellerive and since has gone to Indianapolis, Denver, Baltimore, Wilmington, Del., and next year to New York at Liberty National.

Patrick Reed will make his first start on DPWT this week since the Open (Charlie Crowhurst/R&A via Getty Images)

PGA Tour-eligible Reed’s wild year and fall plans

The new year started off innocently enough for Patrick Reed. He headed to Florida in January for LIV Golf’s annual “Teams” week where he was required to be in attendance for media obligations. From there he headed straight to the Dubai Invitational in the Middle East, with plans to play two DP World Tour events before the season-opening LIV event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Within days, Reed’s plans had changed. After Brooks Koepka’s announced plan to return to the PGA Tour, Reed opted to forge his own path back that would require him to remain suspended most of this year. He’d be allowed back on the PGA Tour after August but only as a non-member with sponsor invites. He could take up membership again in January 2027.

Reed had a nice back-up plan with the DP World Tour, and he’s taken full advantage of it. He won twice early in the year and lost in a playoff in a three-week span in Dubai and Qatar. That vaulted him to the top of the Race to Dubai standings, where he has remained all season.

That is Reed’s ticket back to the PGA Tour full-time in 2027. He will easily secure one of the top 10 spots on the European circuit that will allow full status on the PGA Tour.

“I kind of left it all up to the golf game,” said Reed, who his playing in this week’s Nexo Championship in Scotland. “I was fortunate that the DP World Tour allowed me to play the whole time and not have any suspensions for fines or anything like that (Reed had his fines paid for by LIV Golf through 2025). So to be able to play starting in January onwards, playing some solid golf in order to secure what is possible on the PGA Tour next year.”

While he can accept sponsor invites this fall — he said he has received offers but would not disclose which tournaments — Reed is likely to purse the DP World Tour schedule through the DP World Tour Championship.

To date, it has been an odd schedule for the 2018 Masters champion. After the Masters, he didn’t play again until the PGA Championship, where he tied for 10th. After the PGA, he didn’t play again until the U.S. Open, where he missed the cut.

He then played DPWT events in Italy, Germany and Scotland prior to the Open Championship, where he tied for 46th.

The DP World Tour then took a three-week break after the Open and Reed skipped last week’s tournament in Denmark.

But he’s back in action this week to begin a stretch of five consecutive weeks of golf including the British Masters, European Masters in Switzerland, the Irish Open and the DPWT’s flagship BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth. That coincides with the PGA Tour’s first FedEx Fall event (the Biltmore Championship Asheville in North Carolina).

The following week is the Presidents Cup and Reed would be eligible, although his form of late has not been to the level it was earlier in the year to warrant a captain’s pick.

If Reed is to take a sponsor’s invite on the PGA Tour, there are a few conflicts with DP World Tour events: the Dunhill Links is the same week as the Bank of Utah Championship; the Open de España is the same week as the Baycurrent Classic in Japan; and the DPWT’s season-ending events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai go up against consecutive PGA Tour events in Mexico.

Reed leads Rory McIlroy in the Race to Dubai standings and seems intent on trying to achieve that accomplishment.

“It would mean a lot to me,” he said. “That would be awesome and it’s obviously a goal. This year I have the opportunity to make that happen.”