The FedEx Cup Playoffs belonged to Viktor Hovland in 2023. Three straight under-par rounds to polish off the St. Jude Championship that year set the stage for a full-on sprint to the finish line. A final-round 61, which featured a back-nine 28, saw the Norwegian conquer the BMW Championship outside Chicago before doing the same a week later in Atlanta at the Tour Championship to claim the season-long crown.
Hovland’s postseason scoring average of 66.17, coupled with a sensational Ryder Cup performance later that fall, spurred talk that he may actually be the best player in the game. That was last year, though.
This year has been a far different story for the affable right hander as Hovland finds himself in a precarious position ahead of his FedEx Cup defense. Entering the St. Jude Championship ranked 57th in the standings, Hovland is on the outside looking in for next week’s BMW Championship where the top 50 will play.
An omission from the field in Colorado would mean all three playoff events would be without a defending champion when factoring in Lucas Glover’s absence from this week’s tournament.
Where exactly it all went wrong for Hovland has been difficult to discern despite an openness about his struggles — severing ties with various swing coaches before reuniting with Joe Mayo, getting lost down rabbit holes on YouTube, enduring hours-long, hair-pulling range sessions. However, the 27-year-old admitted Tuesday in Memphis that all the pain and suffering stemmed from the desire to see his golf ball move left-to-right.
“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,” Hovland said, “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.”
Despite his short-game shortcomings — Hovland ranks 175th out of 176 players on the PGA Tour in strokes gained around the green — rightfully taking the brunt of the criticism, it is his iron play which may be the greatest cause for concern.
Amid the worst approach season of his career, Hovland’s strokes gained approach numbers (+0.46 per round) are nearly half of what they were a year ago. He checks in behind players like Greyson Sigg, Dylan Wu, Sam Ryder and David Skinns, all of whom finished outside the top 100 in the FedEx Cup standings. Wrap all this up in one package and you get the year Hovland has experienced — just one top-10 finish and the worst total strokes gained output of his career.
Hovland’s sample size in 2024 is smaller than years past. The Tour Championship represented his 20th tournament of the calendar year the last two seasons. If he is to somehow make his way to East Lake this time around, it will mark his 17th as he has optioned for a schedule consisting of major championships, signature events, the Olympics and just one other tournament.
This has left him more time outside the ropes to continue down his path of progress but less time seeing this progress in action while under the gun. It’s a difficult balancing act for any golfer — working on one’s swing without putting it in practice — but this has been Hovland’s preferred angle of attack.
“It’s just not that fun to play golf when you don’t know where the ball is going,” Hovland said. “I do pride myself in trying to make the best out of it, but it gets to a point where you kind of lose that belief — you just see a shot, and that’s not good enough. I can try to grind my hardest. I can try to chip in from there. But you do that too often, too many times during the course of a round or a tournament, [and] it’s too much to overcome. I feel like it’s a waste of time for me to be playing golf if that’s where I’m at; I’d rather be off the golf course and work on it, trying to figure out why I’m doing those things.”
There is irony here: If Hovland plays poorly this week, he will not be on the grounds next week with plenty of time to work on his game off the course. A rise inside the top 50 from his position has been accomplished previously, but in the grand scheme of things, it appears secondary for a man trying to navigate his way back to the top.
“I’m not sure how long it’s going to take for me to play my best golf. 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,” Hovland said. “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.”
