Nobody could have foreseen Viktor Hovland winning the Valspar Championship, especially since the Norwegian star arrived in Palm Harbor, Florida, fresh off three straight missed cuts.
How Viktor Hovland won the Valspar Championship despite not having ‘best stuff’
Viktor Hovland’s swing has been a mess, yet he somehow put four rounds together and won the Valspar Championship.
Jack Milko has been playing golf since he was five years old. He has yet to record a hole-in-one, but he did secure an M.A. in Sports Journalism from St. Bonaventure University.
Heck, not even Hovland envisioned himself in the winner’s circle.
He was not even sure he would play this week. He considered staying in Orlando and working on his mechanics with new swing coach Grant Waite. But Hovland loves the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook, so instead of pounding balls on the range and trying to work out kinks that have plagued him for 18 months, he decided to tee it up.
Good thing he did.
“It’s been quite the struggle the past year and a half, so for me to come back and win this tournament is quite incredible,” Hovland said.
“I was not very hopeful with my game leading into this week, and, yeah, it just goes to show this game is pretty crazy.”
This absurd game knows no bounds. But how did Hovland go from opening The Players Championship with a first-round 80 to winning the Valspar Championship the following week?
For starters, Hovland had his best-putting week of the season. He gained more than seven strokes on the greens, waxing poetic with his putter. Look no further than his back nine on Sunday, when he made birdie putts from 12 feet, 13 feet, 6 feet, and 11 feet. Sure, those putts were not from too far away, but the tour average for makes between 10 and 15 feet is 30.39%. Hovland is a below-average putter, ranking 120th on tour in strokes gained putting this year, so for him to convert all of these opportunities down the stretch was quite remarkable. They allowed him to sneak past Justin Thomas and win the tournament by a stroke.
The other thing that helped Hovland win this week was his timing on the downswing.
“I was able to time it extremely well this week. It felt like for every single good shot that I hit, I just saved it really well. Because the club is just not in a great place for me coming down, it’s just not what it used to be. So I can’t really rely on my old feels anymore because the club is in a different spot, and I have to change my release pattern to make that work,” Hovland explained.
“Now, incredibly, I did make it work and was able to win, and I think that is something that I’m extremely proud of that I can show up at a PGA Tour event at one of the hardest golf courses we play all year and still win with not my best stuff. So I think that’s really cool, that’s something that I’m extremely proud of, but at the same time, it makes this game a lot more stressful than I think it should be.”
His swing has been a mess for a year and a half, as the former Oklahoma State Cowboy has looked nothing like the player who won the 2023 FedEx Cup. He has looked like a shell of himself since: he missed three of four cuts at the majors last year and posted a pair of top 10s in 2024. Before his trio of missed cuts in 2025, Hovland’s best finish came at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where he tied for 22nd. He fired a 65 on day one then but faded over the weekend — an accurate representation of where his game stood.
Swing coaches have come and gone, too, as Hovland re-hired Waite this month to try and regain his old form.
“I feel like we pushed things in the right direction. It didn’t fix anything by any means, but it definitely mitigated some of the stuff that I was already doing,” Hovland said of his recent practice sessions with Waite.
“So I did get a little bit more comfortable because of that. But, yeah, still the occurring issues are still the same there. But obviously, when you can push it in the right direction, it at least gives you something when you’re out there on the golf course.”
Maybe this is a sign that Hovland is trending in the right direction. Or it could be a fluke — sometimes, you catch lightning in a bottle and win on the PGA Tour. Whatever the case, Hovland winning three weeks before the final round of The Masters is nothing to scoff at. He can win without his best stuff and should arrive at Augusta National with more confidence. Yet, Hovland, as he always does, kept it real when talking about this year’s Masters.
“It’s going to make it really difficult for me to be in contention at Augusta if I don’t rectify that problem or see the improvements there. It’s just a different golf course. You’re going to hit so many long irons into par-4s, and you got to drive it pretty far because the fairways are pretty wide; it’s more of a bomber’s paradise versus this place. It’s more just about being precise off the tee,” Hovland said.
“So there are still some things that I need to improve, but luckily, we got two weeks, and this is certainly nice to have in the back of my mind leading up to Augusta.”
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.
