ROME — The room burst into laughter. Rory McIlroy was asked a series of questions following Team Europe’s Ryder Cup win last weekend. McIlroy, as he often is, is absolutely the center of attention. Finally, a reporter took the microphone and offered to give McIlroy a break. “I’ve got one for Jon,” the reporter said, catching the attention of Jon Rahm, who pretended to wake up.
“About time,” McIlroy said, looking at Rahm, then back to an audience of reporters, who were furious, “he’s just the best player in the world!”
Everyone cheered.
With Viktor Hovland.
It seems to have been lost on everyone that the real joke at the moment was the seeming indifference to the young man who — right now, at this moment — was playing better golf than anyone else in the world. Hovland was indifferent on Sunday. He did not ask a single question during the 27-minute press conference. He was barely mentioned.
This was despite Hovland being one of only two Europeans to play in all five matches in his team’s 16 1/2 — 11 1/2 victory over the Americans. And despite scoring 3 1/2 points, the lone loss came in a Saturday afternoon fourball match when partner Ludvig Åberg couldn’t keep the ball on the planet. And despite him putting Collin Morikawa in a bodybag in their Sunday singles match. And despite being the champion in 2023 FedEx Cup.
And, it must be said, despite being the next great star in professional golf.
If there’s one takeaway from this departed Ryder Cup, and the last two months in professional golf, let it be this. Many young potential stars have come into golf. Only a few are fully revealed. Hovland proves to be one of those special cases that succeeds. Just like McIlroy. Looks like just Rahm. Hovland will live here.
When Viktor Hovland did it on Friday morning 😲#TeamEurope | #RyderCup pic.twitter.com/w6rCtjVx0j
— Ryder Cup Europe (@RyderCupEurope) October 5, 2023
This is not sportswriter hyperbole. European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald quietly pointed out a rare side of Hovland’s genius last week. At Whistling Straits, Donald recalled, Hovland was among the best ball-strikers but was hampered by short-game issues throughout the 2021 Ryder Cup. Two years later, in Rome, Hovland’s short game statistics were the best on the team. As it turns out, he has one of those traits shared only by the great.
“He worked hard on his weaknesses,” Donald said, “and they became strengths.”
That’s why it’s past time to pay more attention to Hovland, to try to understand him better, to maybe ask him how he got so good.
Because anyone paying attention knows what happens next.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Donald said, “if he wins a bunch of majors coming up.”
“Hello, suuuurrrrr! How are you?!”
This is how Viktor Hovland spoke. Every word invites you to drink.
We spoke on the phone a few weeks before the Ryder Cup. He returned to Oklahoma, his home since 2016, when he attended Oklahoma State, leading the Pokes to a national title and filling the shelves with all kinds of individual awards. Today, Hovland could live anywhere, but chooses Stillwater, Okla. Why? Because he’s Viktor Hovland and he’s charmingly weird. The man had a presence in her. Wide, handsome. The shoulders are like a bricklayer. Still completely non-threatening. Big smile. He laughed so hard that he closed his eyes. Everyone likes him. A kind of Norwegian Marty McFly.
I was curious how a thin man who refused to join the army became a murderer. Hovland is not just an elite player. He is an elite winner. There is a difference. Hovland won the Norwegian Amateur at age 16, five years after taking up the game. Four years later, he won the US Amateur. He turned pro in 2019 and has won six times on the PGA Tour with three marquee wins this season — the Memorial, the BMW and the Tour Championship. What is his side?
“Well, I’m trying to psychoanalyze myself,” he told me, stopping and starting, stopping. “I think I try to be a little stoic about things. Obviously, I’m competitive. I like to beat people. But I don’t have to go out of my way to show you that I beat you. It’s more, ‘Oh, I made another putt. Four birdies in a row!’ I let it speak and, yes, I smile when I do it.”
This is the beauty of watching Hovland play. Oddly indifferent, but calculating. Full-tilt, but composed. Have you ever seen him take a practice swing with a driver? The typical pro is behind the ball and carving a windy drill. Hovland? He took two breakneck lashes. He looked like he intended to hit a five-run homer. Then he steps up and hits the ball, unfazed by anyone or anything.
Last Sunday, after wrapping up his singles victory over Morikawa, Hovland watched as Justin Rose attempted to close out the match against Patrick Cantlay. On the 17th tee, Rose’s caddy, Mark Fulcher, told a volunteer to lower a sign that created a shadow about 10 feet behind him. Rose then notices Fulcher, who is also casting a small shadow, and asks him to move. Fulcher apologized and knelt down. Behind the tee, watching such a nuance, Hovland could hardly contain his laughter.
Hovland’s version of nuance? A day earlier on Marco Simone’s seventh hole, he arrived on the tee with music blasting in the distance and didn’t seem to notice. He squeezed it, turned it red, put it back in his bag, and then seemed to notice the song. The lyrics? “Why do you have to go and complicate things…”
“Sometimes when I’m in that zone, it just feels easy,” Hovland explained a few weeks earlier. “I’m close to the pin. When I’m standing over the ball, I feel the ball going into the hole, instead of thinking, ‘Don’t miss it,’ or ‘Don’t hit it there.’ It just happens.”
This is how Hovland became the avatar of what turned out to be a European Ryder Cup performance worthy of all the adjectives. Historical. Epic. ruthless.
Viktor Hovland, right, has a 3-0-1 record in the 2023 Ryder Cup, making it clear that he is one of Europe’s Big 3. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
Playing in the second group of the first session, Hovland hit from the first green, sending Marco Simone into an early frenzy. He was the spark of the 4-0-0 first session. In the afternoon, he and Tyrrell Hatton erased a 2-down deficit with five holes to play against Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. On the 18th, a moment. Hovland’s 26-foot birdie putt landed on the lip, hung in suspended animation, took all the air, froze Hovland on the spot, then fell. Hysteria.
Then came Saturday morning. Hovland and Åberg against Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka. Players have gotten their asses kicked in the Ryder Cup before. But never like this. Hovland and Åberg tearfully leave No. 1-ranked player in the world. They went 8-under in a nine-hole stretch at one point, relatively unheard of in an alternative shot format. Scheffler, the 2022 Masters champion, and Koepka, a five-time major winner, lost in two hours and 20 minutes. The match ended on the 11th hole, 9&7.
Hovland and Åberg dropped an afternoon match to Morikawa and Sam Burns, but Hovland got his revenge the next morning. The supposed matchup of the two 26-year-old ball-striking virtuosos was instead further proof of Hovland’s growing status. He led Morikawa, a two-time major winner, 3-up after six holes. He ended the match on the 15th hole.
Anyone who is surprised is ignored. Before Rome, Hovland was second in the world in total strokes gained over the past three months, behind only McIlroy. While he may carry the perception of an uncomplicated masher — swinging violently, shirt constantly untucked — he is anything but.
“I try to use math and science and numbers and statistics to base my reasoning, to guide me to make better decisions, and I use common sense,” Hovland said of his approach. “When you combine common sense with math and physics, and you work on those things every day.
“That’s why I see results every single year and get better. So I just keep doing it.”
To fully appreciate how far Viktor Hovland has come, and how quickly, it’s worth remembering that Sunday in late May at Oak Hill. It’s been almost four months. Hovland finds himself in the final group of the PGA Championship, tantalizingly close to his first major victory, paired with the unbroken Brooks Koepka. The two jockeyed as the day wore on. Koepka built and protected a lead, but Hovland refused to let up. From the 16th tee, however, Hovland found a fairway bunker on the right side of a long par 4. Bad lie, downhill. The front lip of the bunker isn’t very high, but it’s there. Hovland figured he could break an iron, carry the face of the bunker, and stay in the hole. He thinks wrong. He caught the ball low on the club face, hit a screamer, and slammed his chances of winning his first major into the bunker wall.
At that moment, Hovland stood stunned. Shock. Disbelief. Everything revolves. He posted a double-bogey and, in the end, finished two shots back. Koepka won his fifth career major.
It’s the kind of finish that has leftovers.
For Hovland, it has lessons. Just lessons.
“You can decide to bury yourself in a hole and talk to yourself and beat yourself up, but that won’t accomplish anything,” Hovland told me. “You decide what your reality will be. You decide how it affects your future.”
From anyone else, such holism would be dismissed as prattle. But Hovland is not just anyone. When he says, “You have to control where your thoughts go,” you believe that he can and he does.
His approach to the game matches his disposition. A deadly combination. That’s how he turned the empty disappointment of Oak Hill into a springboard for a summer that changed his place in the game.
“Coming out of there, I really believe that if I found myself in that place again, I would handle it better,” Hovland said. “Not long after, I won the Memorial.”
Hovland appreciates his Norwegian roots and the road he took from Oslo to Oklahoma.
“I have a different perspective on things because I grew up in a different culture, but became an adult in the United States,” he said. “I’ve always been really open-minded, in the sense that I’m very malleable around me. You can either resist change or embrace it. I embraced it.”
That’s what brought him here.
Among the best in the world, in plain sight.
(Top photo: Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)
