Last month, Viktor Hovland’s PGA Tour season ended with a near miss in the Tour Championship. It was a week that started with Hovland finding “something” that allowed him to “hit the ball straight” to get back into contention at East Lake. Hovland was in position to win going into the final round, but stalled, shooting 2-over as Scottie Scheffler caught up and went on to take the title.
Hovland has been in research mode for a while. He has has won each of the past two seasons with the combination of a hot putter and a talent for competition, but it is not what he is looking for. He is looking for something that is both familiar and foreign: who he was.
“No,” Hovland told East Lake when asked if he thought he’d ever find the perfect feeling. “You can say that you are chasing perfection, but you will never reach it. But it is not so much that you are chasing perfection; it is just that you are chasing what I have done for most of my career. I know how good it is, and I know that statistically it is not the same. I can feel that it is not the same. So it is not the same number. It is not the same. The same is not being unreasonable and confabulating things, but I know that there is always a solution, and I’m trying to solve the problems I have and get back to a position where I can play like this week in week out.
That near miss in Atlanta forced Hovland to face a big “philosophical question.” With his PGA Tour season over, will he enter the offseason looking to make small adjustments to his swing or radical changes? He said he hopes to take some extended time to really work on things, especially his inconsistent hitting, which cost him in Atlanta. “In this game, you can feel like you’re really far away, but you’re never really as far away, maybe as you think,” Hovland said. “But at the same time, I would like to – because I have deviated so far from my original DNA, I would like to push that closer to my DNA. Let’s see how difficult it is.”
After taking a few weeks off, Hovland reached the BMW PGA Championship on the DP World Tour. He finished T27 at Wentworth and then took it to the French Open last week, where he fell to a T33 due to what he called “pretty shocking” play off the tee. After his last time in France, it was clear that the length of this odyssey would take on Hovland.
“It’s got to be fun, and I want to go out there and enjoy it,” Hovland said Sunday, speaking of his overall disappointment with his game. “But it’s tough when you see some of those shots that go 150 yards, and then the next shot goes the other way, and you don’t know what to do about it. It’s pretty frustrating. And I’m still trying to grind as much as I can, and do a good job as well to finish the tournament.”
Hovland likes to tinker. He is a seeker by nature and finds fulfillment in research. But eventually, frustration builds when around every bend you find just more dead end instead of the end point you’re looking for. For Hovland, the endpoint, whenever it arrives, will give it to the golf thing that speaks to his soul.
“We all want to win, that’s why we practice so hard,” Hovland said at the 2025 US Open at Oakmont. “But there’s also like a deep passion in me that I want to hit shots. Like I want to stand on the tee and hit the shots that I imagined. When the ball doesn’t do that, it worries me.”
Before he left East Lake, Hovland was asked what Scheffler, the relentless World No. 1, so dominant. It was not surprising that, for Viktor Hovland, what makes Scheffler great is that he has what Hovland is chasing – what Hovland was able to trust.
“He knows where the ball is going,” Hovland said of Scheffler. “I don’t think I try to do too much with him. I think he knows he has an advantage over most guys out there. So he doesn’t have to do anything crazy. He can play smart and just pick his spots, stay in it constantly.”
Hovland’s hope was that his desired destination was closer than it seemed. But in France, it was clear that Viktor Hovland’s quest to find Viktor Hovland is still nowhere near its conclusion.
