MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The reigning FedEx Cup champion who looked so good in winning two playoff events a year ago finds himself searching for the same magic and unsure right now when he will find it.
Viktor Hovland is confident that a trying year that saw him miss the cut in three of the four major championships will turn soon enough, committed to the process of regaining his form, even if it means the three-tournament playoff series carries on without him.
A year ago it would have been unfathomable to think that Hovland, 26, would be at TPC Southwind this week for the FedEx St. Jude Championship without a worldwide victory and lacking the swagger that carried over from the playoffs to a dominating Ryder Cup performance—and with a chance that he doesn’t advance in the playoffs.
Since then he’s seen his form fall off considerably. He dropped—then rehired—his coach. Nearly withdrew from the PGA Championship, where he ended up finishing third. And is now coming off a poor performance at the Olympic golf tournament, where he tied for 30th.
The simple question that has no simple answer: what happened?
“I don't want to get super technical with this, but basically my pattern got off,” Hovland said Tuesday in advance of the $20 million tournament which begins Thursday. “The things that I did in my swing that made me good, that made me able to predict a certain ball flight, I went home and tried to do a certain move, not necessarily because I had in mind that I wanted to change my pattern.
“I knew my pattern was really good. But I was upset that I wasn't cutting the ball as much as I would have liked. My ball flight started to become a little bit of a draw, which is fine. I was still hitting it good. But sometimes visually I would have liked to have seen the cut.
“Then in the offseason I made a conscious effort to try to cut the ball more, and when I did that, I ruined a relationship that happens in my swing that makes it really difficult for me to control the face coming down. So now it's just kind of me learning from that. I know exactly why it happened. I know exactly what happens because I've gotten myself measured, and now it's just kind of a process of getting back to where I was.
“But at least I know I have all the data and the facts on the table to go about it.”
The question as to why Hovland went about trying to fix something that—from the outside—didn’t appear to need to be fixed will always be perplexing.
And then there is the matter of leaving his coach, Joe Mayo, only to bring him back just before the PGA Championship, where he finished third—but has struggled since.
The third-place finish at Valhalla is his only top 10 and his best outside of that is a tie for 15th at the Memorial—where he won a year earlier.
Even a solid weekend at the Olympic tournament—where the Norwegian golfer shot 67-68 after a second-round 75—didn’t do much to bolster his outlook.
“That was kind of just a weekend where I just made a few putts,” he said of the tournament won by Scottie Scheffler. “I missed on the right sides and I was able to score well. The first couple rounds I about hit it the same, but that golf course is very penal off the tee, and into the greens it really penalizes the bad shots. But if you're playing well, you can shoot low.
“I just missed it in the wrong spots because I didn't have that much control over the ball flight. So the second round I was just at mercy of the randomness of where my ball was going. Then over the weekend I made a lot of putts and just was able to score well. That's always nice, but the quality of the shots were not there. I was still a little upset with that.
“But I've been here in the States for a week and spent some good time with Joe, and I feel like we're on the right track. That's kind of where I feel like at least the optimism is coming from, just finally getting a good week to practice every day and get into a nice rhythm.”
Last year, Hovland tied for 13th at the FedEx St. Jude and then won the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship.
His golf at Olympia Fields for the BMW was top-level as he went 65-61 on the weekend then followed up a week later with a final-round 63 at East Lake to tie for the 72-hole low score and win the overall FedEx Cup title.
He added a fifth-place finish at the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA Championship and a runner-up finish at the DP World Tour Championship. Along the way, he went 3–0–1 in Europe’s Ryder Cup victory.
Now seventh in the Official World Golf Rankings, he’s 56th in the FedEx Cup standings and not even assured of advancing to next week’s BMW, which is for the top 50.
“I'm not sure how long it's going to take for me to play my best golf,” Hovland said. “It might be this week. It might be next week. But at least now I'm on a path to progress. I'm on a path to improvement.
“Whereas before, one thing is playing bad, but you don't know why and you don't know how to fix it. That's very challenging mentally. But at least now we're—I might play terrible this week, but at least I feel like I'm on a path to improvement, and that's all that kind of matters for me.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Defending FedEx Cup Champ Viktor Hovland Still Searching But Says He's on Right Path.
