‘I've deviated so far': Viktor Hovland intends to tinker in offseason to find ‘original DNA’

ATLANTA – Viktor Hovland is looking forward to some extended time off. He has work to do.

Hovland nearly won this week’s TOUR Championship on Sunday, finishing runner-up to Scottie Scheffler, but he didn’t feel his game was sharp. Hovland scored well, thanks to a red-hot putter, but he wasn’t going to let that cloud how the rest of his game felt.

“When we talk about my ceiling, I didn't feel like I was anywhere close to it,” said Hovland, who held a one-stroke lead through 54 holes but lost to Scheffler by three.

“If I just had my normal game, my normal ball striking from the previous years, I think I take away this tournament,” he added.

That’s the crux of the issue. Hovland balked when asked if he is leaving East Lake Golf Club optimistic about his game. It’s not that simple. It never is for Hovland. He saw multiple misses on Sunday that concerned him. None were new, but his inability to correct them irked him.

So now Hovland begins an offseason where he expects to make more changes. In recent weeks, he reunited with swing coach Joe Mayo, who was with Hovland during the peak of his powers in 2023, when he won the BMW Championship and TOUR Championship in back-to-back weeks and vaulted to No. 3 in the Official World Golf Ranking. Their task will be to recreate that swing again.

“I've deviated so far off of my original DNA, I would like to push that closer to my DNA,” Hovland said. “We'll see kind of how difficult that is.”

The offseason doesn’t begin immediately. Hovland plans to play three events on the DP World Tour this fall, though he admitted he’s “frankly ready for a little break.” That will come in time. When it does, the real work will begin.

The fact that Hovland was in contention at all was a credit to his putting. He led the field for the week, gaining more than six strokes. It’s what helped him race out to 15-under through three rounds. It kept him in the tournament early on Sunday, too.

After bogeying the first hole, Hovland holed numerous mid-range par putts to keep himself atop the leaderboard on the front nine. Hovland managed to maintain a piece of the lead until the 13th hole. There, he missed the fairway and was unable to advance his ball onto the green. A mediocre bunker shot left a lengthy par putt he couldn’t hole.

Hovland came to the par-4 17th hole down by two strokes, but still with a chance. Standing in the middle of the fairway, just 100 yards out, he blew a wedge over the green and couldn’t get up and down, leading to a bogey that ended his hopes.

“It's just frustrating when I see the same misses coming back time and time again,” Hovland said. “The first few days, I felt like I still wasn't swinging it all that great, but the ball went straight. On Sunday, or today, I still wasn't swinging it great, and now the ball went sideways. When that happens, it just doesn't feel like I could have done much today.”

Not when Scheffler shoots 66, tied for the best round of the day with 2017 TOUR Championship winner Xander Schauffele. Hovland believes he can reach Scheffler’s consistency.

Hovland doesn’t have it yet. He will spend the offseason trying to find it.