After outdueling Justin Thomas to win the Valspar Championship, Viktor Hovland was shocked.
"It’s unbelievable to see that I could win because I honestly did not believe that I could,” he told NBC afterward.
Nearly two months since then, the 27-year-old Norwegian is seeing progression in his game, but isn’t fully content.
“I’m still not entirely happy with where I’m at,” Hovland said Wednesday ahead of the PGA Championship. “What I’m happy about is the progress that I’ve made since right before the Valspar, and even since the Valspar. I think I’m definitely trending in the right direction. But there’s still just some stuff left in there that just doesn't allow me to play to the level that I want to play with.”
Entering the Valspar, Hovland was ranked 146th on Tour in strokes-gained total. Now he’s 84th, gaining 0.120 strokes, as opposed to losing 0.716.
That can be attributed to deconstructing his swing.
“You have to get to the root cause of something,” the world No. 11 said. “I’ve just had a move in my golf swing for the past five, six years that's just been so effortless, and it’s been very easy to predict. And now suddenly the last couple years, it hasn’t been doing that.
“So I have to continue to kind of figure out what exactly is the mechanism or the way to train that old move back in there so I can predict where the ball is going to go again.”
The seven-time Tour winner said his swing changes all the time and relying on how things used to be is difficult. But once he has the results he wants, that helps him get on an upward trajectory.
“I wire my brain to new feels,” he said. “If I see that the ball is doing what I want it to do. If I’m seeing objectively good results, it’s easy to get over the weirdness of how it feels. I do kind of try to separate what I feel and what the ball is objectively doing because that’s ultimately what we’re trying; we’re trying to play good golf and—yeah, so just trying to divorce that, but at the same time, relying on some of that because it is a feel game. If you can’t equate your feels to a good shot, then that’s also no good.”
Maybe, Hovland will surprise himself again at Quail Hollow and leave with his maiden major title. However, that doesn’t mean the tweaks will end.
“I think I’ve been a little bit too flippant maybe in the past of exploring too many areas in trying to get better,” Hovland said. “But as I’ve alluded to in the past, the majority of times I’ve done that, I’ve actually gotten better. I am almost addicted in a way to try to get better because it’s worked out so well for me in my career.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Viktor Hovland ‘Not Happy’ With Where Game Is, but Sees Progress Ahead of PGA .