'Really Humbling:' Viktor Hovland Back in Contention After Year in the Wilderness

Hovland was once the fourth-ranked player in the world but is now 19th. After five coaching changes in little more than a year, he's suddenly in contention this weekend at the Valspar, writes Bob Harig.

Hovland is off to a strong start at the Valspar. / Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images

PALM HARBOR, Fla. — As daunting as it is to comprehend that struggles Viktor Hovland has endured since winning the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup in 2023, it is just as difficult to keep track of all the changes he’s made in the interim.

If you’re scoring at home, it’s five moves — twice involving the same teacher who was removed and later returned — in just more than a year, an indication of the struggles that have seen the Norwegian golfer drop from fourth in the Official World Golf Ranking to 19th.

So, of course, there is Hovland near the top of the leaderboard Friday at the Valspar Championship.

It was a surprise even to him.

“Very happy with obviously the result and the leaderboard,” Hovland said after shooting 4-under-par 67 on the Copperhead course to get to 5 under par for the tournament. “I still feel like I am kind of getting max out of my game right now. So not to put myself down, but for it to be sustainable at that level I need to strike it a bit better and it needs to be a bit more predictable.

“So I'm still working through some changes and I just need to keep working on it. But it's nice to see that the things that you're working on is leading to better results immediately, and it's always a good sign.”

And therein lies the complexity of Viktor Hovland.

The ball going in the hole in less strokes is, of course, the goal. But if it isn’t achieved in the manner that he believes is repeatable over the long haul, Hovland ties himself in knots trying to figure out how to make it so.

It helps explain why he’s already made a couple of coaching changes this year. And how the Valspar is the first tournament with a 36-hole cut where he’s made it to the weekend after missing at three straight events, including last week’s Players Championship, where he shot an opening-round 80.

In his latest coaching switch, Hovland earlier this week went back to former PGA Tour pro Grant Waite, the fifth change he’s made since the beginning of 2024 when he parted ways with Joe Mayo, who helped him to the top of the PGA Tour a year earlier.

After starring in the Ryder Cup for Europe following his breakout Tour season, Hovland made that change at the beginning of last year. He then brought Mayo back prior to the PGA Championship, where he finished third for his first top-10 of the year and one of only two top 10s he'd record.

Hovland then went back to Mayo and then made another change before going back to Waite.

“He’s really smart, and I think I have a little bit of a different perspective now going through a lot of struggles the last year since we worked together, and he has a lot of knowledge and there's a lot of information and I don't think I was quite ready for it a year ago,” Hovland said. “I just wanted it to be super simple and I'll just find a feel and we'll make it work.

“Then we actually needed to put some more work and diligent kind of technical work into it to figure this out. And I think Grant is one of the few guys that can solve it.”

That doesn’t mean Hovland is on the road to automatic recovery. There’s a good bit of negativity floating around in his head, ingrained — unfortunately — from plenty of tough times over the past year.

Missing the cut in three major championships last year didn’t help. Amazingly, he still made it to the season-ending Tour Championship.

And even then, he’s not willing to cut himself much slack.

“I am hard on myself, yeah,” he said. “But that's also why I'm good. If I wasn't hard on myself I probably wouldn't be out here. I know that even with terrible mechanics I can still get out here and shoot a couple of nice scores. But that can also lead to 80 shots at the Players. Because I don't have control over what I'm doing.

“So you get to a place where there's water and trees on every hole, those same shots that might be in the fairway or might be in the rough at an easier golf course, . . . in the long run it's going to cost you.”

After tying for  36th at the Sentry in Hawaii, Hovland missed the cut at the DP World Tour event in Dubai, tied for 22nd at Pebble Beach and then missed consecutive cuts at the Genesis, Arnold Palmer and Players.

A good bit of time was spent working through the issues over the weekend and into this week without much in thew way of expectations. Hovland said he hit the ball terrible in Wednesday’s pro-am and felt fortunate to shoot 70 in the first round.

And here he is with a late weekend tee time.

“Yeah, it sucks,” he said. “You have an ability that you can almost sometimes take for granted. You just wake up every day and you stand over the ball, and you just expect the ball to start in that direction and go that direction and end up somewhere close to the hole. Then it starts to not do that, it's pretty frustrating. You start thinking things you've never thought before.

“And this game becomes infinitely more challenging and it's already really challenging. So it is really humbling and kind of handling those moments, I mean, I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned there. And now that hopefully I can regain my ability and see those shots again, hopefully I can be in a better spot where I can handle that situation better.”