PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Questioning Viktor Hovland about the state of his game has become an increasingly fascinating exercise.
“In my opinion, I suck at it right now,” he said this week at Pebble Beach. “But that’s all relative.”
Highly intelligent, deeply self-aware and refreshingly honest, Hovland has offered some variation of that response over much of the past year, just perhaps not quite that bluntly. It’s obvious he’s not playing as well as he did in the summer of 2023, when he contended in majors and nailed down the FedExCup and became a bona fide star. It’s clear he’s frustrated with how long it’s taken his swing to get back in shape.
But, as he said, it’s all relative, too. Last year was the worst of his career … and yet he still nearly won the PGA Championship, reached the Tour Championship and ranked among the Tour leaders in ball-striking.
“I know there’s a lot of good golf in me that will be there in the future and that I’ve played in the past,” he said. “Things will turn around soon.”
At least it turned around Thursday at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where Hovland signed for a 7-under 65 that left him just a shot off the first-round lead.
Of course, Hovland knew better – and he’d seen too much recently – than to be overjoyed with the hot start.
Technically, mechanically, he said, there’s still work to do.
“It looks great on paper,” Hovland said of a day in which he missed just two fairways and two greens. “It’s just how my mind works is naturally trying to extrapolate what I did today and how would I play over the course of a season. I’m still not happy with my game, how it looks. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t have great individual days or great individual tournaments.
“So I’m still really pumped to shoot 65, but I know that I’m not going to just let that overlook the problems or the issues that I have in my game. They’re still there, but I was able to overcome it today.”
That’s why the past year has been as much of a mental challenge, too.
Hovland hasn’t just lowered expectations – he’s practically eliminated them. He cares immensely about playing high-level golf, and if he can’t, he said, “it hurts.”
“Constantly trying to come out here and pump yourself up to play well and then you’re disappointed because you can’t play at that level,” he said, “it takes a toll psychologically.”
So, lately, Hovland said he’s trying to have more fun. Trying not to care as much about the result. It’s what a sports psychologist might tell him: Just relax! Don’t be so hard on yourself out there! But he also realizes he’s not quite wired that way. It’s why he hasn’t opted for a mental coach even as his slump deepens.
“I’m very technically driven,” he said, “and I know that if my fundamentals are in a good spot and you see good shots and you’re hitting the ball where you’re looking, it’s easier to think better as well. But when the ball is going all over the place and you’re paying a guy to sit there and say, ‘Just be positive’, that kind of grinds my gears a little bit. I don’t want to hear that.
“There are definitely mental techniques, breathing techniques, and you don’t have to be delusional, but you can definitely change the story you’re telling yourself to make you feel better. So there are valuable things to mental training that you can do, but at the end of the day, if you can’t hit the shots that you’re wanting to hit, it doesn’t matter.”
Hovland has been so down on his game that he’s thought about skipping tournaments – even big ones – to toil away on the range at home. That nearly happened last year at the PGA, where he found a quick fix and nearly won at Valhalla. And he admitted it almost happened again this week at Pebble Beach, one of the Tour’s big-money signature events.
“Pretty close, to be honest with you,” Hovland said about possibly not playing. “It’s just, I know that this golf course is easier for me to kind of plot myself around. At a different golf course or different conditions, my ball-striking would be a little bit more exposed and it would be tougher for me to play well. But I know that this week, if we have OK weather, if I can just get it out in the fairway and wedge it close and make a few putts, I can still compete. For me, I would rather work on things outside of a tournament and feel ready and then be super excited to compete.”
His swing might not have felt “all that great” on Thursday, but Hovland looked like his old self at times. He drove it on a line, hitting his last nine fairways. He ranked second in the field in proximity to the hole, averaging 21 feet on his approaches into Pebble’s notoriously small greens. A promising start.
“It’s hard to pick out one thing,” he said. “It was a lot of good today.”
And so Hovland was asked what he’ll do now, following his opening 65. It was chilly. The pro-am round was slow. There was only an hour or two of daylight left.
“I’ll probably hit a few,” he said, before breaking into a wry smile. “Maybe I’ll get inspired and find a new idea or something.”
