Viktor Hovland is back in the PGA Tour winners’ circle, but Shane Lowry and Séamus Power end the week with contrasting emotions despite sharing eighth place at the Valspar Championship.
Power, having secured his first top-10 finish of the 2025 season, was upbeat after closing out with a 66, whereas Lowry, who’d found himself tied for the lead after two holes, will feel that this was another chance missed to capture his first individual PGA Tour win since the Open Championship back in 2019.
“I can’t remember the last time I hit so many good putts that burned the edge,” he said on Saturday after a round of 70 that saw him enter the final round two back, but the same very much applied on Sunday, even if the opening three holes offered hope that his fortunes had changed.
A superb lag putt from 66 feet secured birdie on the par-5 opener, and he poured in eight-footers on the next two – the first for birdie after an aggressive approach on two and the second for par after finding the greenside bunker on three.
In a share of the lead and with a putter that seemed to have shaken its frosty coating, he looked primed to push on, but 12 pars followed as time and again he gave himself makeable birdie putts and time and again, those putts looked destined to drop but somehow stayed out.
He still had an outside chance entering ‘The Snakepit’ – the tough final three-holes – but knew he’d need at least two birdies and help from behind, but a bogey on 16 effectively ended his chances and he closed out with a second successive one-under 70 and cut a frustrated figure as he left to reflect on a week where he’d ranked first in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and 15th in Strokes Gained: Approach, but lost strokes on the greens.
Putting wasn’t a problem for Viktor Hovland, however, who ranked second in the Strokes Gained metric for the week and holed clutch birdie putts on 14, 16 and 17 to reel in Justin Thomas who’d opened up a three-stroke advantage with three holes left to play.
Only Rory McIlroy has more PGA Tour wins than Thomas since 2016, but his long wait for a 16th which stretches back to the 2022 PGA Championship continues, and bogeys on 16 and 18 opened the door for Hovland who duly stepped through.
Hovland, who has been extremely open about his struggles with the swing, had missed three consecutive cuts on the PGA Tour and had considered pulling out of the Valspar to concentrate on the mechanics.
“I wasn’t even sure I was going to play or not until I got here Tuesday afternoon and played a late nine holes,” he said. “I played nine holes in the pro-am the next morning and we were here ready to go.”
It wasn’t quite a vintage performance off the tee – “I am still hitting a lot of disgusting shots,” he’d said on Saturday – instead, his iron play and putting that papered over the cracks and put him in position to win on Sunday. Not that he knew what to expect.
“I didn’t really know,” Hovland said. “I just tried to go out there and play my game and I knew I didn’t feel super comfortable or confident, but I was really patient and just tried to play really smart and I think that’s a credit kind of to myself this week is that I almost felt like I played this week like a veteran, like I’ve been out here for 20 years.”
For Thomas, losing when he’d been on the cusp of winning will sting a little, but he knows that his game is getting sharper week-by-week and he’ll fancy his chances when he arrives at Augusta in just over two week’s time.
“I take a lot of good, way, way more than bad,” he said. “It sucks not winning when you’re that close and have a great chance, but I just hopefully put myself in the same position at Augusta and finish it off better.”
Hovland, despite winning, sounded less certain.
On the one hand, the win “definitely helps,” he said. On the other, “it’s like some of the shots that I’m hitting, it’s going to make it really difficult for me to be in contention at Augusta if I don’t rectify that problem.”
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