Viktor Hovland explains why he’s struggled this season after making one rookie mistake

Viktor Hovland’s decision to split with his longtime coach and make changes to his swing has been one of the great mysteries of the PGA Tour season, with the Norwegian suffering a huge dip in form – but now, he’s opened up on his decision-making process. Hovland won the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup 12 months ago, banking a £14million payday and climbing to third place in the Official World Golf Ranking. Weeks later, he played a decisive role in Europe’s Ryder Cup victory in Rome.

But Hovland was not happy with his swing, despite playing the best golf of his career. He parted ways with Joe Mayo – who had helped the 26-year-old become one of the world’s best players – in the pursuit of perfection. With the FedEx Cup Playoffs beginning at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee on Thursday, Hovland admits he regrets the decisions he made. He has since reunited with Mayo, but it has been a brutal year for the Scandinavian, with just one top-10 finish to his name.

He needs a good week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship to keep his hopes of playing in the 30-man Tour Championship alive, and speaking ahead of the tournament he explained the logic behind his ill-fated attempts to alter his swing. “Basically my pattern got off,” Hovland said. “The things that I did in my swing that made me good, that made me able to predict a certain ball flight, I went home and tried to do a certain move, not necessarily because I had in mind that I wanted to change my pattern; I knew my pattern was really good.

“But I was upset that I wasn’t cutting the ball as much as I would have liked. My ball flight started to become a little bit of a draw, which is fine. I was still hitting it good. But sometimes visually I would have liked to have seen the cut. “Then in the offseason I made a conscious effort to try to cut the ball more, and when I did that, I ruined a relationship that happens in my swing that makes it really difficult for me to control the face coming down. So now it’s just kind of me learning from that.

“I know exactly why it happened. I know exactly what happens because I’ve gotten myself measured, and now it’s just kind of a process of getting back to where I was. But at least I know I have all the data and the facts on the table to go about it.” Hovland opened up on the mental challenges caused by the first significant slump of his highly promising career. He continued: “I mean, it’s just not that fun to play golf when you don’t know where the ball is going.

“I do pride myself in trying to make the best out of it, but it gets to a point where you kind of lose that belief — you just see a shot, and that’s not good enough. I can try to grind my hardest. I can try to chip in from there. “But you do that too often, too many times during the course of a round or a tournament, it’s too much to overcome, and I feel like it’s a waste of time for me to be playing golf if that’s where I’m at. I’d rather be off the golf course and work on it, trying to figure out why I’m doing those things.”