PALM HARBOR, Fla. — There was Viktor Hovland, moments after winning his first PGA Tour championship in 18 months, after storming back from three shots down with five to play to beat a top-10 player in the world for the Valspar Championship.
If there was a moment to declare himself back, to say that every swing fix and coaching change he has put himself through since the 2023 Ryder Cup was absolutely worth it because here he is with the trophy next to him, this was it.
But as much as it was clear that Hovland, the 27-year-old Norwegian flashing that easy smile, was happy, I had to ask him, “How happy are you with your swing right now?”
“Yeah, it’s still not great,” Hovland said. “… The club is just not in a great place for me coming down. It’s just not what it used to be. So I can’t really rely on my old feels anymore because the club is in a different spot and I have to change my release pattern to make that work.”
OK, well, it did work. Results over process, right? Hovland just played four straight rounds under par at the Copperhead Course, including a Sunday 67 with birdies on two difficult holes to edge Justin Thomas by a stroke. No, not so much.
“I think that is something that I’m extremely proud of that I can show up at a PGA Tour event at one of the hardest golf courses we play all year and still win with not my best stuff. … But at the same time, it makes this game a lot more stressful than I think it should be,” Hovland said.
Viktor Hovland, right, walks off the 18th tee with caddie Shay Knight. (Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)
This is, at its core, who Viktor Hovland is and why he believes he’s been able to go from a relatively minor golfing country like Norway to Oklahoma State to the PGA Tour and have as much success as he has. Sunday was his seventh PGA Tour win, including a Tour Championship, and he has three top-five finishes at the majors in the last three years.
It’s not enough to be good. It’s not enough to flirt with great. He’s striving for something here, and why is that a problem?
“I find it kind of weird that we’re professional athletes and the people that are wanting to improve are somewhat looked at, ‘Oh, he’s a perfectionist, he’s out on the perimeter searching too much.’ It’s like, that’s what we do; we are here to get better, and we are here to win tournaments. So if you’re not going to try to get better, what are you doing?” Hovland said.
There’s something to be admired there. The not-so-secret truth of the PGA Tour is that the money is good enough that you don’t have to win to set up yourself and your family nicely. And for years the tour has operated in a way that if you kept your card for a few years, it was hard to lose it, perpetuating a cycle of doing just enough to keep the checks coming. Good is, in fact, the enemy of great. Men’s professional golf is no different from any other industry in that way.
No one has been able to convince Hovland to join the murky middle, even his well-meaning mother, who makes it a habit to let Viktor, at his low moments, know that a lot of other people played poorly that day too. “It never consoles me,” he said.
This was the tournament week for Hovland, who had not made a cut in 2025 and was ejected from The Players Championship with a first-round 80: While committed to the Valspar, he spent Monday in Orlando working with swing coach Grant Waite, and they found something of a swing feel. Enough that Hovland figured he might as well drive over to Tampa Bay on Tuesday, playing a late practice round. Only after those nine holes did he make the final decision to play in the tournament, but with very little, if any, expectation of contending.
Then came a first-round 70, and a 67 the next day that had him one shot off the lead. “I don’t have control over what I’m doing,” Hovland said that day. Playing in the final group Saturday, Hovland shot a 69 and ended the day in a three-way tie for the lead. “Still feels like I’m saving a lot of shots, but they’re going fairly straight, so it’s OK,” Hovland said.
Viktor Hovland leaned on his irons during the Valspar Championship. (Brennan Asplen / Getty Images)
Sunday was a stress test, then. Could Hovland manage his game, play into that swing feel and find a way to win? The answer was a testament to his work. Hovland not only avoided his biggest problem right now — a “big push fade” — on No. 16, where water runs the length of the fairway, but he also hit maybe the shot of the tournament, an approach from 187 yards out to less than 6 feet. With a birdie putt there and another on No. 17, Hovland had a two-shot cushion, enough to bogey 18 and still win.
Now the work begins again with Waite, one of the swing coaches Hovland hired and fired over the last 18 months, bringing him back this month in part because Waite is an information guy and Hovland wants all the information. All the data. Don’t hide from the problem. Lean into it and come back out the other side. Hopefully.
You win this time of year on the PGA Tour and it’s only so long until the questions inevitably come around to the Masters. There are 18 days until the first round, and Hovland believes what he did to win this week — taming tight fairways with accurate iron shots and a good week putting — will not have the same effect at Augusta National, an entirely different test of golf. That is his reality as he sees it, though Hovland sprinkled in some positive self-talk.
“I still need to be honest so I can attack the problems that I have and we can improve, but at the same time, I got to give myself some credit. And even no matter how bad it feels or how many poor shots I’m hitting, I’m still capable of shooting good scores with it. So I kind of have to keep that in the back of my head,” Hovland said.
So, is Viktor Hovland back? Yes. Just don’t ask him to confirm it.
(Top photo: Brennan Asplen / Getty Images)
