Viktor Hovland could be Europes biggest Ryder Cup weapon
GUIDONIA MONTECELIO, Italy — Viktor Hovland turned 26 last week, but he still looks like the baby-faced amateur who burst onto the golf scene four years ago, treating preeminent courses like his personal playgrounds and unlikely to exchange a cross word with anyone.
And yet, even though Hovland’s grin looks ripped from a high school yearbook, here’s what Luke Donald had to say about him: “He is an assassin.”
“Just fearless,” added the captain of the European Ryder Cup team. “That’s how I see him.”
When the team showdown between Europe and the United States tees off with foursome matches Friday, Norway’s affable assassin stands to play as big of a role as anyone for the European squad — including teammates Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm, the second- and third-ranked players in the world — with a reasonable chance to play five matches in the three-day event.
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Hovland comes in playing as well as anyone on the planet. Last month, en route to his first FedEx Cup title, Hovland won the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship in consecutive weeks, posting a final-round 61 in Chicago and then a final-round 63 seven days later. He pocketed $21.6 million in prize money from the two victories, but Hovland is still building toward something bigger.
He’s a restless mechanic who can’t help but tinker. He devours video and absorbs instruction; if there’s a different way to do something — to position his hands or angle his wrists, perhaps — he’ll give it a shot.
“He’s consumed with trying to see how good he can be,” said Alan Bratton, the longtime coach at Oklahoma State who started recruiting Hovland from Norway a decade ago. “Viktor is very confident and isn’t afraid to try new things. And if they don’t work, he scraps them and moves on to the next.”
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Though Hovland has posted tour wins in each of his first four seasons as a pro, his game continues to take giant leaps from one year to the next. He’s already a different player than the 24-year-old who made his Ryder Cup debut at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin in 2021. He played in five matches then, finishing 0-3-2, as the entire European team struggled to put points on the board.
“I felt like I played okay, but I lacked the special things in the matches to where you really flip the momentum around and you can build on a big putt or an up-and-down or maybe a chip-in or something like that,” Hovland said following a practice round Tuesday. “That just wasn’t there.”
Since then, he has made huge strides with his short game and has become mentally stronger in big situations, confident that he can better recover from an errant shot.
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“Even if I don’t have my game or I don’t hit it as well as I would have liked, I still feel like I can win or get up-and-down from a terrible spot,” he said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, I have to be in the perfect spot to have a chance to win the match.’ There’s a belief and a confidence that I can get myself out of any situation, and I think that’s a huge turnaround from last time.”
It was all deliberate. He entered the year fully aware that he had to improve — especially around the greens — if he was to consistently be among the top players in the world. He began working with instructor Joe Mayo, known as the “Trackman Maestro,” who takes a modern, highly detailed approach that was like catnip to a technique obsessive like Hovland. They used 3D imaging to break down each movement of his swing, making slight adjustments to shoulder and pelvis positioning.
“He basically just explained the physics of why I didn’t have a great short game before. It wasn’t because I wasn’t talented enough or I didn’t have the ‘hands’ to do it,” Hovland said. “I was essentially just getting a little too shallow into the ball and getting way behind it.”
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Hovland still lives in Stillwater, Okla., and spent hours each day honing technique at Karsten Creek Golf Club, Oklahoma State’s home course, getting comfortable with the slight tweaks, making the new swing feel routine.
“He’s turned into a great pro, taking care of his details,” Bratton said. “And you see it in how he eats, how he trains, how he sleeps — all of those things.”
He can be as serious practicing as he is walking down the 18th fairway on a Sunday. That’s where Donald notices that steely-eyed assassin look.
“Just me slowing everything down and not showing a lot of emotion kind of helps me calm myself down and I can perform at a higher level,” Hovland explained recently. “ … I’m just not the guy, if I make a putt, [to] go absolutely crazy. I might give it a little fist pump, but the less emotions I can kind of give away when I’m in that — when I’m in contention — I think it’s the better for me.”
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His diligence has paid off throughout the season. He was in the mix at the Masters, but his final-round 74 left him tied for seventh, and he finished just two strokes off the lead at the PGA Championship, where he tied for second. Hovland remains the world’s highest-ranked player without a major title, but he leaped from No. 60 on strokes gained tee-to-green in 2022 to fifth this season. And he went from No. 191 in strokes gained around the green to No. 83.
“It’s been a great year for me,” he said Tuesday. “Played a lot of good golf. But this is the Ryder Cup, and that all kind of goes out the window.”
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