Viktor Hovland receives Ryder Cup lifeline as ‘miserable’ season comes to an end

Viktor Hovland’s “miserable” season is over due to injury, but he has received a lifeline that means he is eligible for next year’s Ryder Cup. Hovland emerged as one of the best players in the game in 2023, winning the FedEx Cup title and playing a defining role in Europe’s Ryder Cup triumph in Rome. But in pursuit of refinements to his swing, Hovland’s game has deserted him.

His frustrations worsened last month when he withdrew from the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth due to an undisclosed injury, and he was a notable absentee from Thursday’s opening round of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. As first reported by Bunkered, the DP World Tour has confirmed to Mirror Sport that Hovland’s injury will rule him out for the rest of the year.

Hovland will miss the Race To Dubai finale in the United Arab Emirates next month as a result, and his abrupt end to the season left him short of the requirements to keep his DP World Tour card – and thus his eligibility for Ryder Cup selection. The tour’s rules require players to compete in four counting events to keep their card, but Hovland has played just two such events this year – the Olympic Games and the Genesis Scottish Open. LIV Golf stars Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton risked falling short of the threshold until the appealed fines imposed by the DP World Tour.

However, fears Hovland may not be eligible for the showdown with the Americans at Bethpage have been quickly allayed, with a DP World Tour spokesman confirming the Scandinavian has received a medical exemption, reducing his counting event obligations and enabling him to keep his card. The injury is a sadly fitting chapter to close a dismal year for one of the game’s brightest talents. He dubbed his season “pretty miserable” in the midst of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, but he believes he has diagnosed the issues in his swing and will bounce back strongly in 2025.

“It’s just not that fun to play golf when you don’t know where the ball is going,” Hovland said in August. “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.

“But hey, that’s how it goes sometimes, and I feel like I’ve learned even more about my golf swing, which I didn’t really think I could, so there’s always stuff to learn, and I’m super pumped about kind of where I’m headed. “I’m not sure how long it’s going to take for me to play my best golf. It might be this week. It might be next week. But at least now I’m on a path to progress. I’m on a path to improvement. Whereas before, one thing is playing bad, but you don’t know why and you don’t know how to fix it.

“That’s very challenging mentally. But at least now I might play terrible this week, but at least I feel like I’m on a path to improvement, and that’s all that kind of matters for me.”