The story goes that at the last Ryder Cup, Padraig Harrington asked each of his players to write down who they would like to play with. The Irishman was stunned when they all came back with the same name – Viktor Hovland.
After the Norwegian’s emphatic success in winning the Tour Championship on Sunday night, Luke Donald must expect an even bigger stampede to partner up with Hovland in next month’s biennial contest in Rome.
“Put it this way, if anyone was asked by Luke to play with Viktor they aren’t exactly going to say no, are they?” said Rory McIlroy.” Not in this form.”
McIlroy might actually be a wise bet to forge a pairing with Hovland. Not only can the 25-year-old rival McIlroy in the ball-striking stakes, but the boy who learned to play in an aircraft hangar during the bitter winters in his home country, does not have to feel intimidated in financial terms after this past fortnight.
The $18 million (£14.32 million) he collected in the FedEx Cup finale added to the $3.6 million (£2.86 million) for winning the previous weekend’s BMW Championship, making it a haul of $21.6 million (£17.18 million) over the last eight days.
That is more than any golfer has ever earned on-course in two weeks, including on the LIV Golf circuit. His caddie, Shay Knight, will have picked up more than $2 million [£1.59 million] as his percentage, and the joke on Tour is that he is one of the highest paid Australians in sport in the last 12 months.
If those figures are staggering – and many might find the riches OTT, if not offensive – then at least Hovland had the good grace to ensure that his numbers on the scorecard were similarly jaw-dropping. He fended off Olympic champion Xander Schauffele by five strokes on the daft handicapped scoring system – Hovland started the week on seven-under, Schauffele on two-under – but he was a genuine 20-under par meaning that, combined with the BMW, he was 37-under for eight rounds.
His 63 on this particular Sunday – the lowest final-round score by the winner in Tour Championship history – happened to be two strokes worse than the previous Sunday. Hovland is so hot he is struggling to keep up with himself at the moment.
“The game plan was to try to play as boring as possible – play it like Tiger [Woods] back in the day when he would post a 69 or 70 in a major championship and walk away with the victory,” Hovland said, with a nod to Schauffele’s 62. “What he was doing today was very special. It made this day more stressful than it should have been. But it’s pretty surreal to be standing here right now. I played basically my best golf the last two weeks and it couldn’t have happened at a better moment.”
Donald will just be desperate for the purple patch to continue for another month. Hovland performed well at Whistling Straits in 2021, with Harrington impressed enough to play him in all five sessions. But he collected only one point. Donald knows that, two years on, Hovland is a different golfer, having made dramatic improvements not only to his short game, but also to a long game that did not appear to require fixing.
Hovland, however, realised there was another leap to make, ripping up his motion to ensure greater consistency, particularly on the tough tracks.
“If you want to get to the next level, you have to look introspectively,” Hovland said. “I think when you try to be honest with yourself and ask yourself, ‘OK, how can I get better?’ I just basically have to force myself to change a couple of these mindset things.”
McIlroy has witnessed the transformation close up. “He’s found a really repeatable golf swing,” he said. “He sort of aims it up the right side, brings it in over and hits that sort of flat cut down there. He’s one of the best drivers of the golf ball in the world. I think as we all know he’s improved around the greens this year. That’s been the difference from still being a top-10 player in the world to what he’s done this year.”
The next stage in Hovland’s individual odyssey is obvious. He finished second in the USPGA in May and fourth in last year’s Open. Frankly it will be a surprise if Oslo - or “California 2.0” as Hovland comically calls it - is not celebrating its first major winner in the next five years. Yet team play is next on his radar and Donald must be thrilled that his side boasts the world Nos 2, 3 and 4 and that the triumphant triumvirate will all attend the reconnaissance/bonding mission to Marco Simone Golf Course in two weeks time.
“For the most part, we are all playing really good,” said MciIroy, who allayed fears about his recent muscle spasms in his back by finishing fourth at East Lake. ““It’ll be just a lovely experience, we’re going to spend a few nights in Rome just to get the team together. It will be nice to all get together, get in some early team-dinners. That team chemistry is starting already. Yes, everybody will probably want to sit next to Viktor.”
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