PGA Tour Insider Close to Viktor Hovland Has 4-Word Clarification for Golfer’s Shock Coaching Change
Why is Viktor Hovland in the limelight again? The Norwegian international has caught a lot of attention from the media due to the uncertainty about his future. Hovland has been rumored to jump ship to LIV Golf after receiving a mega deal from Greg Norman. The Australian commissioner of the Saudi-based league has been eagerly hunting for new faces and the 27-year-old golfer is one of the most promising candidates for him.
There were speculations that Hovland will be making his LIV Golf debut in February this year. However, all of them were put to rest after the 6x PGAT winner announced his participation in The Sentry 2025. Now, the Oslo local has become a topic of discussion again on the No Laying Up podcast as 4 of the hosts gathered to discuss The Sentry and its participants. That’s when TC asked KVV about what the latter thinks about all the reports regarding Hovland apparently making a lot of changes to his gameplay again.
That’s when the veteran golf host replied, “The most important thing to remember about Viktor (Hovland) is he just has a restless mind,” commenting on how the golfer proactively thinks about improving his game at every moment. Kevin further added, “He cannot stop tinkering,” suggesting that Hovland will always be thinking of changing something. The host confirmed that he doesn’t have any idea why the Norwegian split from his instructor Joy Mayo but he speculated that the duo “disagreed on a path forward,” for the golf pro.
Sharing inside information about the kind of dynamic Hovland & Mayo shared, KVV said that the instructor was often asking him to tweak his game, and “He didn’t want to be out there (doing) a week-to-week tweak.” This suggests that Viktor Hovland was frustrated by the methods deployed by Joe.
KVV also mentioned how Hovland had quoted that he never really needed a coach as he mostly follows what feels right to him. The No Laying Up host shared how concerning it is as it seems that “Viktor is one of those people who is bound to never feel satisfied,” as he believes that this is not a great method of “having a repeatable pattern,” where the game eventually comes naturally to the pro golfer.
KVV definitely had some valuable insight into the situation. It certainly seems that Viktor Hovland needs to focus on consistency to achieve more success in his golfing career. Maybe his abrupt decision-making is the reason behind his lack of success recently. Let’s take a look at Hovland’s record in the past couple of years to understand the major differences.
Is Viktor Hovland growing as a player?
Going back to 2023, Viktor Hovland was living the dream. The then-25-year-old had just come off a trophyless season to capture the Hero World Challenge 2022. He continued to give high-calibre performances for the next 6 months with 8 top-25 finishes before his next victory. In June, Hovland won his 1st title of 2023, the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. He continued to dominate the league until the end of the year when he won 2 consecutive titles, the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship.
Compared to 2023, last year was not a successful year for Viktor Hovland. He was cursed with injuries for the longest time. Moreover, he only managed to get 1 runner-up finish and 2 other top-10 places on the leaderboard. He ended the season trophyless but had secured enough points to finish in the top 50 of the FedEx Cup leaderboard. This has allowed him to participate in The Sentry 2025. Even before the tournament began, he ended up breaking his pinky toe putting his participation in the season-opener under threat.
