From FedEx Cup champ to questioning everything—that's how Viktor Hovland's season has gone

MEMPHIS — Viktor Hovland’s all-out, hair-on-fire, scorecard-blazing run to the 2023 FedEx Cup title began here at the FedEx St. Jude Championship with a pre-tournament practice session that augured disaster. Such is the way things work in golf.

Whether the Norwegian can replicate that performance is one of the biggest mysteries heading into the opening leg of this year’s FedEx Cup Playoffs on the PGA Tour. Hovland again is not thrilled with his game—which has been a year-long psychological drag on his normally sunny disposition. So he’s encountering a bit of déjà vu. Or at least he is hoping that might be the case.

“I've had so many of those range sessions the last year, it's hard to remember them,” said Hovland, trying to recall what transpired last year on the eve of the playoffs and how that compares to his struggles this season. “We all play bad golf sometimes, and we get frustrated. Hopefully you can keep it still something to learn from when you're there or else you're just wasting your time.

“I feel like we just kind of had to air everything out and really talk about, ‘OK, why was that a bad shot?’ And sometimes you need to hit those moments to actually learn something and actually take action in a different direction. Joe [Mayo, his swing coach] just gave me a really good feel, and then when I try to recreate that feel on the range, I saw some improvement, and that gave me the confidence that, OK, when I go out there tomorrow, I think I know where the ball is going, and I can control it. And then as soon as I just saw a couple of good shots, that gives you that belief, and you just run with it. Then I started chipping in, I started making putts, and that's the game of golf for you.”

Boy, did he ever run with it. After an opening two-over 72 at TPC Southwind, Hovland shot 12 under the final three rounds to end up T-13. Then he destroyed Olympia Fields with a final-round 61 to win the BMW Championship before sprinting to the tape in the Tour Championship to win the $18 million FedEx Cup title. Good times.

This year has been different. He left Mayo for a spell before reuniting prior to the PGA Championship, where Hovland posted his only top-10 of the season, finishing third at Valhalla Golf Club. That’s right, Hovland, ranked seventh in the world, has had just one top-10 this year. He missed the cut in the other three majors.

Coming off a T-30 finish in the Olympics, his only competition since the Open at Royal Troon, Hovland, 26, said recent work with Mayo is giving him signs of hope.

“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,” he said. “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.”

Hovland admitted that there have been times he has become discouraged to the point of not wanting to compete in a tournament. He almost withdrew from the PGA before finding a swing that worked for him and gave him a chance for his first major. “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,” he said. “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, it's too much to overcome, and 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.”

He doesn’t have that choice this week. Hovland is the defending FedEx Cup champion. But it’s a long climb to even get back to East Lake in Atlanta for the Tour Championship, as he comes in ranked 55th in the points standings. He’s an underdog for sure, but he said he has felt like an underdog, “in some way my whole life, so I guess I'm kind of used to that position.”

Maybe that’s his way of coping with the pressure or with his frustrations this year. But the playoffs offer new challenges, a new season of sorts. He can still do something special.

“I try not to think about my FedEx rank or all that stuff so much this week,” he said. “I've obviously been vocal about me not playing very well this year, so that's kind of what I'm focusing on, just trying to get the horse back on the track and work on the things that I need to work on to play good golf, and then all the other stuff, that will work out if I take care of that stuff.”