Letter from Valhalla: Hovland searching for necessary confidence boost

RETURN TO FORM? Viktor Hovland, of Norway, watches his tee shot on the 11th hole during the first round of the PGA Championship. Pic: Jeff Roberson, AP

Viktor Hovland had it all sorted out. The short game issues that curtailed his potential had been resolved. 

The 26-year-old Norwegian who pushed Brooks Koepka to the brink at last year’s PGA Championship had seemingly blossomed into a star in full before our eyes in 2023.

Back-to-back playoff wins to claim the FedEx Cup championship. Elemental figure in Europe’s Ryder Cup triumph. Hovland had joined the small club of best players in the world.

“From the PGA to the Ryder Cup, there is no doubt in my mind he was the best player in the world,” Joseph Mayo, Hovland’s swing coach, said.

Hovland and Mayo, however, parted ways at the end of 2023. Hovland is afflicted with the kind of swing tinkering obsession familiar to players like Pádraig Harrington. 

And as his game slumped through the first four months of 2024 and he slid from No. 4 to seventh in the world, no amount of tinkering was working as well as what worked for Hovland last season.

“That’s what’s crazy with this game,” Hovland said. “There’s always something to kind of work on.” So as the second major of the season approached (he missed the cut at the Masters), Hovland made a phone call to his former coach, Joe Mayo, and reunited.

“Yeah, that’s correct,” Hovland confirmed after a first-round 3-under 68 had him among the leaders at the PGA Championship. “Just reached out and was wondering if he could take a look at my golf swing, and let’s get back to work.

“He knows my swing really well. He’s really, really smart, and just has a way of looking at my swing and kind of knowing what it is right away.” The feedback Hovland got from the reunion seems to have triggered an immediate lift in his game.

“Felt like I got some really good answers, was able to apply some of the feels right away, and I saw improvement right away,” he said Thursday. “Yeah, it’s easy to keep going then.

“I wouldn’t say I found something. But some of the feels that Joe told me, just from the last couple of days, just tried to kind of exaggerate them a little bit. Because it’s easy – you do it in practice, and it feels better, but then out on the course, you kind of revert back to some old stuff.

“It was just kind of reiterating the same stuff, and just kind of try to get on the other side because then the next day at least you’re getting closer.” 

Now Hovland needs to rebuild the confidence with which he closed out last season – a confidence that helped him and rookie partner Ludvig Åberg close out Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka in humiliating 9-and-7 fashion at Marco Simone in Rome.

Whether that confidence can put Hovland back into the mix at the PGA this weekend is unknown, but it’s a start down the path back to his potential.

“Where does confidence come from? It comes from results,” he said. “And to play better and get the results I want, I have to make some technical changes.

“Now, it’s just a matter of how technical those changes need to be. But if you’re hitting it poorly, you’re not just going to figure it out by doing the same stuff. You have to change some stuff.

“I was trying to get back to what is the most natural for me to do instead of going down these other rabbit holes. But yeah, so that’s just what we’re doing.”