Viktor Hovland shot 63 in his final round at the Tour Championship and won the 2023 FedEx Cup. The next day work crews began the process of blowing up East Lake Golf Club for a makeover that will be ready in time for this year’s FedEx Cup finale.
About that same time, coming off the greatest season of his career, Hovland began the process of blowing up parts of his own game. Whether it’s ready for this week’s Masters is very much in doubt.
In fact, the inquisitive Norwegian was working with a different coach on Monday, three days before the season’s first major championship.
“I’m still kind of looking for some opinions out there,” Hovland said. “But I feel like I’m on a good track right now and we’ll see where that takes us.”
Most followers of golf will wonder what was wrong with the track that Hovland was on last year? He won three times, including the Tour Championship, had the first-round lead at the Masters, tied for second at the PGA Championship and finished in the top 20 at each of the four majors.
There were probably 14 million reasons for Hovland to keep things the way they were.
But not for Hovland, who loves nothing more than noodling with his swing.
“It’s one of those things,” he said. “I was playing great golf last year but it’s not like I’m trying to change my golf swing. In the game of golf, you try to do the same every day, but things aren’t the same every day when you go to the golf course. I took a huge break after last year and when I came back, things were a little bit different, and I had to kind of find my way back to where I think I’m going to play my best golf.”
The key to Hovland’s breakthrough season was his improvements around the greens. He worked with coach Joe Mayo and saw his short game numbers show dramatic improvement. In 2022, he ranked No. 191 in shots gained around the green, but saw that number improve to 88th. Through five events this year he’s at No. 185.
“At the end of last year, I felt like I was playing great, but I got a lot out of my game and it didn’t necessarily feel sustainable,” he said. “I got to basically the pinnacle of what my golf swing was able to do last year. Just when I keep looking at my swings from 2020, 2021, I just really had more control of the golf ball, in my opinion.”
This season hasn’t had the same sparkle for Hovland. His best finish in five events was T-19 at the Genesis Invitational. He was T-62 at The Players Championship in a prelude to the majors.
His world ranking has dipped to No. 6; he was No. 4 after winning the FedEx Cup. His scoring average has risen from 68.92 last season to 70.47 this year and he’s No. 84 on the FedEx Cup points list.
“It’s like you’re trying to work on something, but it doesn’t necessarily feel right and that’s when you have to go back to the drawing board to keep figuring out until tings start to click,” Hovland said. “I feel like I’m in that situation now. I just have to keep practicing and get the reps in and we’ll see how long that takes.”
Hovland said some days he’ll look in the mirror and “slow swing” until it feels right. Other times he’ll go to the range and spend as many and seven or eight hours trying to make it work.
“Sometimes you feel like you’re making progress,” he said. “I would say a little bit recently it hasn’t been that satisfactory, but at the same time, if you don’t see the results you can always learn something. It’s all a process. It goes up and down but if you’re always trying to see results at the end of every single day, you can get disappointed a lot.”
