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ROME – The room laughed a lot. Question after question came to Rory McIlroy following Team Europe’s victory in last weekend’s Ryder Cup. McIlroy is, as he usually is, the center of attention. Finally, a reporter took the microphone and offered to give McIlroy a break. “I have one for Jon,” the reporter said, drawing the attention of Jon Rahm, who pretended to wake up suddenly.
“It’s about time,” McIlroy said, looking at Rahm and then back at an audience of journalists, indignant, “he’s just the best player in the world!”
Everyone laughed.
Including Viktor Hovland.
It seemed unaware that the real joke at the time was the apparent indifference towards the young man who, right now, at this moment, is playing better golf than anyone in the world. No attention was paid to Hovland last Sunday. He was not asked a single question in the 27-minute press conference. He was barely mentioned.
This despite the fact that Hovland was one of only two Europeans to play in all five games in his team’s 16 1/2 – 11 1/2 victory over the Americans. And despite scoring 3 1/2 points, the only loss came in a Saturday afternoon fourball match when his teammate Ludvig Åberg couldn’t keep the ball on the planet. And even though he put Collin Morikawa in a body bag in their singles match on Sunday. And despite being champion of the 2023 FedEx Cup.
And, it must be said, despite being the next big star of professional golf.
If there is anything to learn from this defunct Ryder Cup and the last two months in professional golf, let it be this. Many young potential stars come to golf. Only some are fully manifested. Hovland is proving to be one of those special cases that makes it through. Like McIlroy. Same as Rahm. This is where Hovland will reside.
When Viktor Hovland achieved this on Friday morning 😲#TeamEurope | #RyderCup pic.twitter.com/w6rCtjVx0j
— Ryder Cup Europe (@RyderCupEurope) October 5, 2023
This is not hyperbole from a sports journalist. European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald quietly pointed out an extraordinary side to Hovland’s genius last week. At Whistling Straits, Donald recalled, Hovland was among the best forwards, but was frustrated by short game problems during the 2021 Ryder Cup. Two years later, in Rome, Hovland’s short game statistics were the best on the team . Turns out he has one of those traits that only the greats share.
“He’s worked very hard on his weaknesses,” Donald said, “and they have become strengths.”
That’s why it’s time to pay more attention to Hovland, to try to understand him better, maybe to ask him how he got so good.
Because anyone who pays attention knows what comes next.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Donald said, “if he won several majors in the next few years.”
“Hello, suurrrrr! How are you?!”
Thus speaks Viktor Hovland. Each word invites you to have a drink.
We spoke by phone a few weeks before the Ryder Cup. He was back in Oklahoma, his home since 2016, when he attended Oklahoma State, leading the Pokes to a national title and stocking the shelves with all kinds of individual awards. Today, Hovland could live anywhere, but he chooses Stillwater, Oklahoma. Because? Because he’s Viktor Hovland and he’s endearingly weird. The boy has a presence to him. Spacious, handsome. Shoulders like a bricklayer. However, totally harmless. Giant smile. He laughs so hard that he has to close his eyes. Everybody likes it. A kind of Norwegian Marty McFly.
I was curious to know how someone with the build of a conscientious objector came to be such a murderer. Hovland is not just an elite player. He is an elite winner. There is a difference. Hovland won the Norwegian Amateur Championship at the age of 16, five years after he started playing. Four years later, he won the US Amateur. He turned professional in 2019 and won six times on the PGA Tour, including three major victories this season: the Memorial, the BMW and the Tour Championship. What is the advantage of it?
“Well, I’m trying to psychoanalyze myself,” he told me, stopping and starting, stopping. “I think I try to be a little stoic about things. Obviously, I’m competitive. I want to beat people. But I don’t have to work hard to show you that I beat you. It’s more like, ‘Oh, I made another putt.’ Four birdies in a row!’ He let that speak for itself and, yes, I smile when I do it.”
This is the beauty of watching Hovland play. Strangely indifferent, but calculating. At full speed, but serene. Have you ever seen him swing a driver? The typical professional gets behind the ball and performs a joyful try. Hollandia? He receives two dizzying lashes. It looks like he’s planning to hit a five-run home run. Then he steps in and hits the ball, unfazed by anything or anyone.
Last Sunday, after wrapping up his singles victory over Morikawa, Hovland watched Justin Rose attempt to close out a match against Patrick Cantlay. On the 17th tee, Rose’s caddy, Mark Fulcher, told a volunteer to take down a sign that created a shadow about 10 feet behind him. Then Rose noticed that Fulcher was also casting a small shadow and asked him to move. Fulcher apologized and knelt. Behind the tee, seeing so many nuances, Hovland could barely contain his laughter.
Hovland’s version of nuance? A day earlier, on the seventh hole, Marco Simone came to the tee with music blaring a short distance away and never seemed to notice. He pinned it, threw it away, returned to his bag and then seemed to notice the song. The letter? “Why did you have to complicate things so much…”
“Sometimes when I’m in that zone, it feels easy,” Hovland explained weeks earlier. “I’m taking the shots close to the flag. When I’m standing over the ball, I feel the ball go into the hole, instead of thinking, “Don’t miss this,” or “Don’t hit it there.” Just past.”
Thus Hovland became the avatar of what became a European Ryder Cup performance worthy of all adjectives. Historical. Epic. Relentless.
Viktor Hovland, right, went 3-0-1 in the 2023 Ryder Cup, making it clear that he was one of Europe’s Big 3. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
Playing in the second group of the first session, Hovland chipped in from the first green, sending Marco Simone into an early frenzy. He was the spark of a 4-0-0 in the first session. In the afternoon, he and Tyrrell Hatton erased a 2-try deficit with five holes remaining against Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. On the 18th, wait a moment. Hovland’s 26-foot birdie putt reached the rim, hung in suspended animation, took in all the air, froze Hovland in place and then fell. Hysteria.
Then came Saturday morning. Hovland and Åberg against Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka. Players have had their asses kicked in the Ryder Cup before. But never like this. Hovland and Åberg left the world’s number one player in tears. At one point they were 8 under par over a nine-hole stretch, something relatively unheard of in an alternative shot format. Scheffler, the 2022 Masters champion, and Koepka, a five-time major winner, lost in two hours and 20 minutes. The match ended on the 11th, 9th and 7th holes.
Hovland and Åberg lost an afternoon match to Morikawa and Sam Burns, but Hovland got revenge the next morning. What was thought to be a showdown between two 26-year-old ball-striking virtuosos was instead further evidence of Hovland’s rising status. He led Morikawa, a two-time major winner, 3 up after six holes. He finished the match on the 15th hole.
Anyone who was surprised hasn’t been paying attention. Before Rome, Hovland ranked second in the world in total strokes gained over the past three months, behind only McIlroy. While he may have the perception of an uncomplicated masher (violent punch, shirt constantly unbuttoned), he is anything but.
“I try to use math, science, numbers and statistics to base my reasoning, to guide me to make better decisions, and I use common sense,” Hovland said of his approach. “When you combine common sense with math and physics, and you work hard at those things every day.
“That’s why I’ve seen results every year and gotten better. So I keep doing that.”
To fully appreciate how far Viktor Hovland has come, and how quickly, it is worth remembering that late May Sunday at Oak Hill. It was almost four months ago. Hovland found himself in the final group of the PGA Championship, tantalizingly close to his first major victory, along with the indomitable Brooks Koepka. The two competed as the day progressed. Koepka built and protected a lead, but Hovland refused to let up. However, off the 16th tee, Hovland found a fairway bunker along the right side of a long par 4. Bad lie, on the downslope. The front edge of the bunker wasn’t very high, but it was there. Hovland thought he could break an iron, take the face out of the bunker and stay in the hole. He thought wrong. He caught the ball near the clubface, hit a screamer and slammed his chances to win his first major into the bunker wall.
At this moment, Hovland was stunned. Shock. Disbelief. Everything spinning. He made double bogey and, in the end, finished two strokes behind. Koepka won the fifth major of his career.
It was the kind of ending that comes with residue.
For Hovland, it came with lessons. Just lessons.
“You can decide to bury yourself in a hole, convince yourself and punish yourself, but that’s not going to accomplish anything,” Hovland told me. “You decide what your truth is going to be. You decide how it affects your future.”
Anyone else would consider such holism quackery. But Hovland is not just anyone. When he says, “You have to control where your thoughts go,” you believe that he can and that he does.
His approach to the game matches his disposition. A lethal combination. Here’s how he turned the empty disappointment of Oak Hill into a springboard for a summer that changed his place in the game.
“Coming out of there, I really believed that if I found myself in that situation again, I would handle it a lot better,” Hovland said. “It wasn’t long after that I won the Memorial.”
Hovland credits his Norwegian roots and the path he took from Oslo to Oklahoma.
“I have a different perspective on things because I grew up in a different culture, but I became an adult in the United States,” he said. “I have always had a very open mentality, in the sense that I have been very malleable with what surrounds me. You can fight the change or accept it. I accept it”.
That brought him here.
Among the best in the world, at first glance.
(Top photo: Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)