World No. 4 Viktor Hovland tees-up in this week’s The Sentry, and the opening event of the 2024 PGA Tour season, looking to join what would be a unique club of just four players.
Three players in the history of the Tour have captured three ‘regular’ events in succession – Tiger Woods (2008), Rory McIlroy (2014) and Dustin Johnson (2017).
“I missed it on the wrong side a lot and putted awful,” Hovland said.
It was reminiscent of his feelings in the Bahamas just a year prior following an even better result. In December 2022, he won the Hero World Challenge for the second consecutive year but left The Bahamas island with a similar tinge of dissatisfaction.
There was something wrong with his swing that he couldn’t nail down. It was shortly thereafter that Hovland reached out to instructor Joe Mayo. Mayo quickly diagnosed the issue. Hovland’s chest wasn’t moving fast enough through impact. Addressing the issue tightened Hovland’s dispersion and started a professional relationship between Hovland and Mayo that proved fruitful for the rest of the year.
Early in 2023 the duo tackled Hovland’s chipping, which had long been the glaring weakness of his game.
In his first four seasons on the PGA Tour, he didn’t finish higher than 124th in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green. In 2022, he ranked 191st out of 193 qualified players. The best players can’t have that big of a hole in their game.
Hovland knew it. So when Mayo came to him with a possible — but radical — solution, Hovland was all ears. Mayo convinced Hovland to hit down on the ball more steeply, going against the teaching wisdom of the day.
“His chipping is about as weird as it gets, hitting down on it that much,” said Sepp Straka, a Ryder Cup teammate of Hovland’s. “I don’t understand half the things he works on.”
That has never bothered Hovland. He searched the depths of the golf world to craft the game he has today. His swing has been influenced by copious YouTube tutorials, a few coaches and countless imperceivable edges he picked up along the way. The chipping issues had been the hardest hurdle to clear. But Hovland has been above-average around the greens since he changed his form. In 2023, he gained strokes around the green for the first time in his career.
Whether his chipping can become an asset rather than just a passable part of his game will go a long way in determining if there is yet another jump for Hovland in 2024. He sees room for improvement in his putting, too.
That emphasis came from Edoardo Molinari, the DP World Tour player who moonlights as a data analyst to Hovland and several of the world’s top players. Looking through his statistics, Molinari found Hovland’s lag putting worsened in 2023.
The PGA Tour stats paint a similar picture. Hovland was an above-average putter overall but ranked 174th from 20-25 feet and 126th from outside 25 feet. That contributed to a middling three-putt avoidance percentage and too many squandered opportunities.
Molinari also found Hovland struggled on putts with a particular break, though he declined to delve into specifics. “If he can have a few more good putting weeks he could be unreal,” Molinari said. That bore out last season. In three tournaments, Hovland gained more than one stroke per round on the greens. He won all three. Should Hovland win this week it will also be a seventh Tour victory in just four years since capturing the 2020 Puerto Rico Open.
However, and without wishing put a dampner on Hovland’s efforts this week, he’s contested the past three events in Hawaii finishing T31st in 2021, T30th in 2022 and T18th a year ago.
FOOTNOTE .….
McIlroy’s three PGA Tour counting wins in succession were the 2014 Open Championship, the WGC-Bridgestone and the PGA Championship.
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