PALM HARBOR, Fla. – The coaching carousel for Viktor Hovland is active again. Hovland, the 2023 FedEx Cup champion, has split from Denny Lucas — his swing coach from his college days — and reconnected with Grant Waite during the Arnold Palmer Invitational two weeks ago.
Hovland, 27, is mired in a slump that has seen his world ranking dip from fourth a year ago to currently No. 19. He missed his third straight cut last week at the Players and hasn’t made the weekend in a tournament with a cut yet this season. He hasn’t recorded a top-20 finish this season. Hovland struggled with the big stick at TPC Sawgrass, ranking 142nd (out of 144) in SG: Off the Tee in the first round, putting too much stress on his short game, which never was a strength and has regressed, and shot 80. He tried to put a positive spin on his bounce-back 68 before leaving the Players.
“I’ve seen good improvements just in the last week but it’s going to need some time and work to get it back to where it was,” Hovland said on Friday. “Really working on the mechanical things to get it back to where I can be able to predict the ball flight. I don’t know how many tournaments I will be filling in. I have been seeing better results in practice, which is promising, because my philosophy is if I can’t hit the shots in practice there is really no point for me to play tournaments. At least now I’m seeing some improvements in practice.
Asked on Friday if he would play this week at the Valspar, he said, “Still thinking about it. I’m registered so we will see.”
Hovland showed up at Innisbrook Resort for the Valspar but conceded he isn’t oozing confidence.
“I didn’t feel good enough but I’m already over here and Grant said we could keep working on things. I haven’t felt great with my ball striking during the practice rounds but I feel like I found something this afternoon on the range. It may not work immediately tomorrow or this week but I don’t care too much about that. I just have to get back on the horse, get back to my D.N.A.”
Hovland seemed on the verge of breaking through in the majors after winning the final two events in the 2023 FedEx Cup and playing well at the Ryder Cup in Rome. But he parted ways with instructor Joe Mayo shortly before the 2024 season. He bounced from Dana Dahlquist to Waite and returned to Mayo last May and nearly won the PGA Championship at Valhalla, settling for third. But the reunion proved short-lived as Hovland and Mayo split again before this season began. T.J. Yeaton, a pro in Nashville, was reportedly a consultant for a stretch. Hovland teamed up with Lucas, who coached him for 2 ½ years during his time at Oklahoma State University, for a month, Hovland said. But that relationship ended after a missed cut at Arnie’s Place.
“Smart guy,” Hovland said of Lucas. “We’d worked together and obviously he knows my swing pretty well and seeing if he had a different point of view that none of the other coaches I had seen had.”
He continued: “It’s just tough to figure things out. When I go and see a different person I hear a lot of the same things but I’ve tried them and they haven’t worked. So you kind of have to start searching a little bit or think from a different point of view and I didn’t quite get that from Denny, even though he said a lot of good stuff.”
Waite, 60, a one-time Tour winner from New Zealand, happened to be at Bay Hill during the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Hovland stuck around in Orlando for a couple days after missing the cut, and asked Waite if he could examine his swing.
“We got together and I liked the way he said things,” Hovland said. “Now I have a different perspective from when we worked together last time.”
When a reporter said it was becoming difficult to keep track of his coaching changes, Hovland said, “I make decisions like every other day because I’m trying to get to the bottom of this. From the outside, it looks kind of chaotic but to get to the bottom of stuff you have to make decisions like that.”
Hovland was encouraged by his latest range session and a promising development with his takeaway.
“I don’t want to jinx it but I think we discovered something,” he said. “Not to get super-technical but I’ve been looking for a transition that I’ve always had my whole life and never had to think about. Now it’s not occurring. It’s because my wrist angles have changed. I always had a bowed left wrist. I’m doing less of that and it affects how I’m torquing the club in the downswing and in transition. Now we’ve discovered something that as soon as I set it more into flection and off the ball and maintain it there, a lot of the same movements are coming back. It feels super-foreign because I haven’t done it in a long time. I’ve seen a lot of good shots on the range. Old video confirms that movement, so, I just need to stay on top of that.”
Waite already had departed his side but that didn’t stop Hovland from singing the praises of his latest coach.
“There are not that many guys that have that level of knowledge and experience when it comes to playing,” Hovland explained. “It’s one thing to have the information and deliver it in a certain way but there’s also needs to be a certain personality that can tell me yes or no and can say it so I can trust the information. If there’s too much doubt, I know myself personally that I have a tendency to bounce around and have other ideas. I need to lock down certain non-negotiables and that’s where Grant is really good.”
#PGA #Tour #star #Viktor #Hovland #coach
