Viktor Hovland can view his name atop the leaderboard at the Valspar Championship, but what he wants to see is his ball shaping the way its supposed to, repeatedly and on-demand.
Hovland is tied with Shane Lowry for the clubhouse lead Friday at Innisbrook Resort. Given how he’s played as recently as Thursday, he’s pleased with his position.
Thursday, in fact, is what Hovland has been seeing a lot of the last year and a half. He kept the ball in front of him, didn’t do anything too bad, made a few putts, and shot 1-under 70. The problem with that is, it all feels random. Just as easily as he could shoot 70, he could shoot 80, which is what he did in the opening round of last week’s Players Championship, which led to his third consecutive missed cut.
This is the first tournament with a 36-hole cut this year in which Hovland will play on the weekend.
Hovland has been searching for what only he really knows since winning the 2023 FedExCup. Last year, he contended in a major (third, PGA), nearly won a playoff event (T-2 St. Jude), and qualified for the Tour Championship. But those were also his only top-10 finishes of the season, and this year has been similarly inconsistent.
His quest has led him back to swing coach Grant Waite, with whom he worked briefly last year and reconnected a couple of weeks ago after a missed cut at Bay Hill.
Waite is taking his second turn on Hovland’s coaching carousel, and Hovland admits he wasn’t ready for what the Aussie had to offer the first time around.
“I just wanted it to be super simple and I’ll just find a feel and we’ll make it work,” he said of their first go-around. “Then we actually needed to put some more work and diligent kind of technical work into it to figure this out. And I think Grant is one of the few guys that can solve it.”
There’s been a lot to work on, from tee to green, in a short amount of time. These are some of Hovland’s notable stats this season:
- 146th on Tour in strokes gained: total
- 174th on Tour in strokes gained: around the green
- 169th on Tour in strokes gained: putting
Coming off The Players MC, Hovland wasn’t sure if he’d keep his commitment to Valspar. He opted to play, with this possibly his final start before the Masters. There were “a lot of bad shots” in the Tuesday pro-am and Wednesday’s practice round. Thursday wasn’t much better, he said, but “it was nice to putt well” – something, as confirmed by the stats above, he hasn’t done well in a while.
So, why was Friday, in his words, “a way bigger step” forward? Stats wise, he hit fewer fairways and fewer greens than he did in Round 1. He did, however, gain nearly 2 ½ more strokes on the field in putting than the day prior. And, he just felt like he was controlling the ball off the face of his club a bit better – but not completely.
“I still feel like I am kind of getting max out of my game right now. So not to put myself down, but for it to be sustainable at that level I need to strike it a bit better, and it needs to be a bit more predictable,” he said. “So I’m still working through some changes and, yeah, I just need to keep working on it. But it’s nice to see that the things that you’re working on is leading to better results immediately, and it’s always a good sign.”
Now comes the test Hovland greatly desires: how his game holds up in contention. He seems as interested in the outcome as those watching. Regardless of where his name lands Sunday evening on the leaderboard, if Hovland continues to see more of the lines he wants and gains more trust in what his ball is going to do, he’ll leave Florida a satisfied – as much as Hovland can be – man.
“I am hard on myself, yeah. But that’s also why I’m good. If I wasn’t hard on myself I probably wouldn’t be out here,” he said.
“At the end of the day like, yes, it’s awesome being a the top of the leaderboard right now, and have a chance going into the weekend. But it’s like I truly just care about the things that I’m working on. And if the ball is behaving and doing the things that I want it to do, I’m going to play a lot of great golf in the future.”