No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 890 - Viktor Hovland Is Searching For A Feeling

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

A year ago, Hovland won the FedExCup, then got lost in a maze of swing theory. KVV went looking for answers. This week we present his written feature in narrative form as Hovland tries to regain his 2023 form You can read KVV's original piece on our website: Viktor Hovland is Searching for His Old Self If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining The Nest: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at nolayingup.com/join Support Our Partners: Duer - use this custom NLU link for 15% off One Bars fanduel.com/nlu  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club. Be the right club today. Johnny, that's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Expect anything different. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Solly here. I am taking a week off. I am going to be throwing it to our guy, Kevin van Valkenburg,

here shortly. He is going to be essentially reading his Victor Hovland piece from several months ago with some updates and some mixtures in there as well. But we're working on making more of his writing into these long-form audio pieces in case you missed it or in case you want to be refreshed on it from a few months ago and everything as we are into the tour championship this week. It was an interesting topic for him to cover. I want to give a shout out to our friends at Dewar. I've been reaching for the Dewar pants. Whenever I get a

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20% off shopdewar.com slash nlou. I absolutely love their stuff. And lastly, before we get going, all protein bars generally taste the same but not one bars one made protein bars that are actually delicious with Reese's and Hershey's. Only one Reese's peanut butter lovers protein bars made with real Reese's peanut butter only one Hershey's cooking and cream protein bar is made with Hershey's cookie bits. Each co branded bar delivers 18 grams of protein and 3 grams of sugar. One also has other delicious flavors like birthday cake, maple glazed donut,

and blueberry cobbler which contain 20 grams of protein and 1 gram of sugar. One bar is the perfect protein bar to get you through your busy day. Whether you need a quick pickup between meetings or need some fuel to power you through your workout, one bars are the perfect treat. Find all one bars at a retailer near you or on amazon.com. Without any further delay, here is KVV. ["The One Bar"] Everyone was nervous. The players, the caddies, the fans. There was an energy in the air that day. The kind that only a Ryder Cup can produce. Thousands of Team Europe supporters had surrounded the first green. Many of them dressed in vibrant costumes and donned war paint on their faces.

They wanted to erupt, but for the moment, it was quiet. Everyone's eyes were locked in on Victor Hovland. Ludwig Oberg had flared his approach in Europe's foursomes match against Max Homa and Brian Harmon. And now Hovland was facing the kind of short game shot that used to cripple him. He was still carrying some mental scar tissue from his first router cup at Whistling Straits when he didn't chip well and let a partisan American crowd get to him. But this was nightmare fuel. The ball was sitting on the tightest possible lie, practically on the green. If he was going to chip it or pitch it, he'd need to land the ball at the

crest of a ridge and use spin to get it close to a tucked right pin. I was standing a few feet away, notebook in hand, studying Hovland's face. I had come to Italy to cover the Ryder Cup, but in the back of my mind, I was also determined to shadow Hovland as much as I could. He had just won the FedEx Cup the month before and had emerged as one of the best, if not the best, player in the game. I wanted to understand what made him tick. We're all so nervous, Max Homa told me later. He, too, was studying Hovland. I'm thinking we're going to really see this Joe Mayo stuff

because he's chipping from the first cut and the fringe might as well be the green. It was so awkward. That is not a golf shot you'd like to hit anywhere, let alone the first hole of the Ryder Cup. The safe play would be to putt it, and that's what Hovland's caddy, Shane Knight, suggested he do. Hovland shook him off.

No, I've trained for this, Hovland said. I can do this. A little mistake, cowboy, Victor Hovland. Gonna chip this right off the edge of green. The chip came out low and with spin, landing right where Hovland was looking. It trundled up the ridge and then began trickling to the left. With six feet to go, Hovland started walking after it, assuming he needed to study the break for Oberg's putt coming back.

But the ball kept drifting towards the hole. It kissed the pin and dropped into the cup. Hovland shouted over the roar, high-fiving Knight as he strutted after his ball. Team Europe veterans, who felt protective of Hovland because of the way he was tormented over his short game at Whistling Straits, were beaming. Tommy Fleetwood later shared that Hovland told his European teammates he thought about putting it, but he knew the only way he was going to make birdie was by holeing out. That shows you something Fleetwood told me.

First hole of the Ryder Cup, and he's thinking, what's the best way to hole this? Hovind went 3-1-1 that week and was an essential cog in Europe's decisive victory. He and Oberg made history on Saturday by beating Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepke 9-7, the biggest margin ever in an 18-hole Ryder Cup match. And on Sunday, he throttled Colin Moorakawa in singles 4-3 to help quash any hint of an American comeback. It felt like golf's newest superstar had just grabbed the reins of the sport. He'd just won the FedEx Cup, contended in multiple majors, and was a star of the Ryder Cup. But a year later, Hovland seems like a different player.

This season, he went on a nomadic mental journey, tearing down his golf swing, rebuilding it several different ways, finding some success, but also plenty of frustration. He missed the cut at three majors, had just one top 10 during the regular season, and along the way, he cycled through a handful of swing coaches, eventually returning to the place where he started.

He says he feels like he's on the right path to finding his old swing patterns, but he's admittedly not sure how long it will take to feel like his old self. On the eve of the Tour Championship, the event where he shined brightest a year ago, it's hard not to wonder. What happened? Let's start here.

There's no such thing as a perfect golf swing. Ben Hogan did not have one in 1953. Tiger Woods did not have one in 2000. They may have come close, but in golf perfection is always fleeting. It manages to dance just beyond the grasp of its pursuer. The greatest golfers can occasionally touch it, but they never truly hold it. Hogan and Woods both understood this. They chased perfection anyway. They would beat balls until their hands would crack and bleed. They would study their grips and their connection to the ground. They searched for secrets in the grass and the dirt, just to feel, a couple of times

per round, like the ball and club had converged in perfect harmony. Victor Hovland may not have their golfing resumes, but he appears to be similarly wired. He is a deep thinker and frequent tinkerer. He craves information and not just about golf, but about science and aliens and conspiracies. When he gets curious about a subject, he likes to sending down a YouTube rabbit hole in search of more. According to people who have worked closely with him, the things that make Hovland unique and feed some

of his genius can also work against him at times. He is manic about his work ethic, his prep, his diet, and his process. He is also, in the words of one person who knows him, one of the most stubborn people alive. On any given day, Hovland's goal is to consume as much information as possible, then sort through what he likes and apply it to his own game. He has been this way ever since he was a teenager growing up in Oslo, Norway.

When I approached Hovland in January at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am to ask if he'd talk about his unique way of thinking about the golf swing, he demurred, asking if I could reach out through his agent instead. I didn't know it at the time, but he was already feeling anxious about some swing changes he was working on and starting to feel lost. He was reluctant to let anyone see behind the curtain. At this year's Masters, Hovland answered a few questions about the origins of his swing theories. I just remember growing up and loving the game of golf and just started getting on YouTube and Googling stuff, Hovland said. I found a couple of guys that I liked and

then I started to learn what they teach and how they teach. Then that leads me to another guy. I start reading his stuff and see how that contradicts with the other guy or maybe he has a different take on things. So it was definitely a huge process there of just trying to learn as much as possible. What is indisputable about Hovland is that he played some of the best golf of anyone in the world in 2023. For the season, he won three times had two top 10 finishes and majors

won two PGA Tour playoff events and then was a star of the Ryder Cup. That season, however, still left him wanting. Hovland was, even then, chasing a feeling that he couldn't quite articulate. When he looked at videos of his swing from 2020 and 2021, he felt more in control of his shots. He wanted that feeling back. Sometimes in the game of golf, you try to do the same thing every day, but then things aren't the same every day when you go to the golf course, Hovland said during the week of the Masters. I took a huge break after last year, and when I came back, things were a little different.

I had to kind of find my way back to where I think I'm going to play my best golf. And even at the end of last year, I still felt like, yeah, I was playing great, but I got a lot out of my game and it didn't necessarily feel sustainable. Hovland said he was surprised, if he was going to be honest, that he was able to win the FedEx Cup in 2023. He still felt like he needed to make changes. That's kind of what I'm doing now, Hovland said. Sometimes you feel like you're making progress.

I would say a little bit recently that it hasn't been satisfactory. Every golfer makes adjustments and tweaks to their swing throughout their career. Often the adjustments are necessary to compensate for injuries or how the body changes with age. Other times it's performance driven, the desire to hit it farther, lower, or eliminate a troublesome miss.

Occasionally it's aesthetic. A golfer will see their swing on video and hate the way it looks. No one tinkered as often nor as successfully as Tiger Woods. He tore down and rebuilt the DNA of his golf swing multiple times and had stints working with Butch Harmon, Hank Haney, Sean Foley, and Chris Como during his professional career. But Wood's successful evolution represents the exception, not the norm. Sometimes when you start messing with the sensitive dynamics

of a singular golf swing, it can be difficult to put the pieces back together. After watching Hovland tinker with his swing for hours at the driving range on Wednesday night of the Masters, a practice session that went on for so long, Hovland's caddy had to find an outlet to recharge his launch monitor after the battery died, I called NBC golf analyst, Brandel Chamblis,

to get his take on Hovland's constant itch to tinker with his approach. Chambly was blunt in his assessment. Victor has a tendency to go from teacher to teacher to teacher said Chambly. I know scores of teachers that message me saying that Victor is asking them to help him with his golf game. Each one of those teachers thinks they're the only teacher that he's texting. The danger of going from teacher to teacher

is that eventually you'll stumble upon someone who will absolutely blow your mind with technical jargon that will convince you that they can solve every single problem. But it's been my experience that more often than not, those teachers are method teachers. They are far more interested in bending you to their method, thereby validating their method,

than they are at trying to get you to play your best golf through your own instincts, talent, and experience. That's the real danger. And I think that's what's happened to Victor. To understand how Hovland could go from playing the best golf in the world to failing to break 80 at the Masters in a matter of months, it helps to understand the climb that got him to the summit of his game in the first place. The way he fell in love with golf in Oslo has been well chronicled.

His father, an engineer, had a temporary job in the United States near a driving range, and when the job in St. Louis ended, he came home with a set of golf clubs and gave them to his four-year-old son. Eventually, his first loves, taekwondo, soccer, and skiing, faded away. Golf did not. By age 11, Hovland was obsessed. At first, the limited golf season in Norway,

where courses were closed four months of the year, was maddening, but it set in motion certain habits that are still apparent today. For months at a time during the winter, Hovland could only feed his appetite for the game by hitting balls inside an old airplane hanger that had been converted into a driving range. It was the only place in the entire country where you could see the flight of the ball in the winter, although even that was limited to 80 yards off the clubface. For someone with an intellectual mind like Hovland, hitting balls wasn't enough. He needed to understand the golf swing and the engineering behind it. So he

went spelunking into the caves of online golf instruction. That led him to a little known instructor working on a driving range in Hawaii and Kelvin Miyahira and his first introduction into one of the most important theories of his life, kinematics. He was kind of the first guy I'd seen that started to talk about kind of the biomechanics of the golf swing, Hoblin said. Before that, I was just like, oh, swing on the plane, or oh, you're in to out or whatever. So I really liked that level of detail in

describing the golf swing, what the actual body parts are doing. And that obviously leads you to a different rabbit hole. Miyahira, who gave lessons off weathered artificial turf mats and based his teachings on what he learned about the kinetic chain by studying European javelin throwers, helped a light bulb go off in Hovland's brain. His theories on the importance of the spine engine and the necessity of right lateral side bend

remain essential pieces of Hovland's swing, even today. I think it's neat to have an understanding about that stuff. The more information you have, in my opinion, it can only help you, Hovland said. It served as a catalyst for his rise through the European junior ranks, but as a teenager, he still wasn't anyone's idea of a sure thing.

In 2013, when the Oklahoma State University golf program began recruiting another Norwegian, Chris Ventura, they happened to stumble upon Hovland too while watching the European Boys Championship. He was chubby and all of 5'6", but his ball striking seemed exceptional. Head coach Alan Bratton kept thinking about him. As they recruited him over the next two years, they realized they were getting one of the most inquisitive minds in golf.

I would say the biggest thing with Victor is he's his own man, said Donnie Dahr, who worked with Hovland as an assistant coach at Oklahoma State. He forms his own opinion and his own thoughts. He isn't afraid to be daring and try different things. He doesn't feel like he has to do what everyone else is doing.

He's gonna do what he believes is best for him until he decides that's not the right path to go on. But he's a very curious guy, always trying to get better. He never seems to be satisfied with where he's at. As a freshman, Hovind was a good player, a freshman All-American, but he had noticeable holes in his game. He didn't hit the ball high enough and he couldn't hold firm greens. Launching a three-wood high in the air was a nightmare. But each week he

put in the work to get better. He'd often pause his rain sessions to do mirror work for an hour, obsessing over positions at different points in his swing. When I asked Ricky Fowler, who got to know Hovland a little as an Oklahoma State alum, about his first impressions, Fowler smiled. He immediately struck me as someone who wasn't scared, said Fowler. He took a lash at everything, but away from the course, he was organic.

He wasn't trying to put on an act. He was goofy and he made fun of himself, but he worked his ass off. He knows he's not like other people, but at the same time, he's genuine. As time went on, Oklahoma State coaches would make suggestions and Hovland would always listen, but he would only adopt the elements that he agreed with.

He also started working with a swing coach, Denny Lucas, whom he'd found on Instagram. Lucas helped him get steeper on the ball, helped him hit it higher, and it unlocked something special. One of the gifts I think he's always had is he seems to have a very strong filter, Dar said. He's willing to listen to people willing to hear their side of things and think about it, and then decide if it works for him. He's certainly proven over the years as he's tried different theories that as a coach, you kind of need to trust that he knows what's best for him.

Hovland's methodical, stubborn, occasionally scattered approach paid off handsomely in 2018 when Hovland was part of, arguably, one of the best college golf teams in history. The Cowboys won eight times during the regular season, then captured the school's first NCAA title since 2006, going 5-0 in the finals against Alabama. Two months later, Hovland won the U.S. Amateur in dominant fashion, blitzing through the field at Pebble Beach and crushing Devin Bling 6-5 in the final. I always thought I had a good vocabulary, Hovland said after the win, but I'm at a loss for words. More after the break. Line up your first win when you bet the PGA Tour on FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook.

You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets, guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet. The Tour Championship, always a tricky one to look into with the staggered start, Scottie's big lead, all that stuff, he's never been able to close one of these. You know, I think he's gonna do it. It's also just a really interesting board to play because of how many possibilities there are for guys to move up, down, and the staggered start

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Must be 21 and older, 18 and older in DC and president select states. Gambling problem called 1-800-GAMBLER visit rg-help.com. First online real money wager only $5 deposit required bonus issued as non withdrawal bonus benefits expire seven days after receipt restriction supplies see terms at sportsbook.fandal.com back to KBV Even as Hovland ascended, turning professional in 2019, he couldn't resist seeking out additional

opinions. One of them was Joseph Mayo, a teaching professional working at the time in Las Vegas who had built up a large and devoted following on social media under the handle Trackman Maestro. Mayo received a message from Hovland in October that year asking if he could take a look at his swing. He came out to see me at TPC Summerlin and I watched him hit balls, Mayo said. He was putting on a ball hitting exhibition and was simply incredible. We went back to my house that evening and I had a few cocktails and I kind of got a little loose lipped. I looked at him point blank and I said, I will not be your golf instructor. You don't need a golf instructor.

If you want to come to Vegas and play poker and hang out and drink some bourbon, then I'm your guy. But we're not going to do golf instruction because you don't need it. Holland thanked Mayo for his candor, but the pep talk didn't stop him from shopping around for additional opinions. He knew he needed work, particularly on his short game. His driving and ball striking were masking some of his deficiencies around the green, but his full swing was so good, even the best players in the world were taken aback when they saw it in person. I think the thing that struck me about Victor was that he was very sure of himself, said Roy McElroy, when I asked for his first impressions.

When I think about myself in my early 20s, I was so self-conscious. I was so awkward and didn't know at all what I wanted. Victor seemed so sure of himself. The chipping, however, was a problem. Even after Hovland won his first event as a professional, the Puerto Rico Open, he saw no reason to pretend otherwise. At that point, he was ranked 230th out of 231 players on the PGA Tour in strokes gained around the green, and nearly threw away the win after two disastrous chips led to a triple bogey on the 11th hole of the final round. I just suck at chipping, Hovland said in his post-round interview.

I definitely need to work on my short game and I was 100% exposed there on that hole. He went to see legendary swing coach Pete Cowan after his first win in Puerto Rico and Cowan tried to teach him to open the club face more and use the bounce on his wedges, but the technique didn't really take. Eventually, Hovland sent some videos of his swing to Jeff Smith, another teaching professional working in Las Vegas with a large online following at Radar Golf Pro. They'd met once when Hovland

asked for some thoughts on his putting stroke. Initially, he was looking for some direction in his full swing, Smith said in an appearance on the Stripe Show podcast with Travis Fulton. I met with him and we did some work together. He kind of gave me an opportunity to get familiar with how he moves and what he does in his swing. For me, it became more like, man, you've got it figured out already. That relationship almost immediately bore fruit. Hovland won three times on the PGA Tour and twice in Europe over the next two seasons. With a win at the Dubai Desert Classic, he climbed a third in the official World Golf rankings. He also got into contention for the first time in a major,

beginning the final round of the 2022 Open Championship tied for the lead with McElroy, although he faded to T4 with a 74 on Sunday. Along the way, he continued to build his reputation as one of the more thoughtful Mercurial players in the game. He learned that he liked driving solo from city to city, and he liked visiting museums and looking at paintings with his headphones on.

We've talked a bit about conspiracy theories, said Sepp Straka, Hovland's Ryder Cup teammate. I love talking about that, and he loves talking about that. We've talked about aliens too. He really got into Stonehenge, and I thought he was kidding, but he was really into it. When we were at Wentworth, he drove like an hour to go see it. Halvin wasn't close to many tour players but he was friendly with everyone.

He does things his own way and that works for him said Matt Fitzpatrick. I can't speak highly enough of him. In my opinion he's quite a quiet kid. I've spent a ton of time with him, practiced rounds, rider-cub dinners but I wouldn't say I know him, particularly outside of golf. As good as his driving and his ball striking was, his short game remained a glaring weakness. Dozens of stories from that year were written implying Hovland had improved, that his chipping and pitching were no longer a liability, but the statistics told a different tale. At the end of 2022, he ranked 191st on the PGA Tour in strokes gained around the green.

In December of 2022, Hovland cold called Mayo again. He wanted to know if Mayo would be willing to take a look at his swing and offer some thoughts. Mayo's reputation as a short game coach had only grown since they'd last communicated, but Hovland wasn't just looking for short game advice. He wanted a full assessment. He sent me some swings, and within 10 seconds of looking at the first one, I hit redial,

Mayo said. I said, what in the world is going on? I didn't like what I was seeing at all, and he didn't like it as well. He was displeased with the way it looked, with what the ball was doing, and I was displeased as well. That was the beginning of us working together. When I initially reached out to Mayo, he was hesitant to talk about the year he and Hovland spent working together. He said he had turned down hundreds of interview requests prior to agreeing to talk to me, but in May of this year, he felt that enough time had passed that he was

finally comfortable opening up. In doing so, he wanted to make one thing clear up front. He is extremely appreciative of Hovland, who took him to places he never could have imagined. I thank him for taking me to the highest level, Mayo said. He introduced me to things that I'd never seen before. That's why I'll always say, Victor Hovland did more for me than I ever did for Victor. I owe him a debt of gratitude that I can never repay. There's no shortage of theories in golf instruction about the best way to teach the short game.

What works for Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods might not translate well for some golfers and the same is true of Jason Day or Steve Stricker, even though those four players represent the pinnacle of very different approaches. On YouTube and Instagram, there are two dozen coaches promising to teach golfers their secrets, many of them competing for likes, views, and subscribers,

with information that can easily blend together if you scroll from one reel to the next. In recent years, the method of teaching players to open the clubface and slide the club under the ball, typically brushing or bruising the ground with a bounce of the wedge, has exploded in popularity. Mayo's approach is dramatically different, although he is adamant that he does not force anyone to deploy any particular method. Instead, he uses a track man to show how certain strikes generate spin, and he believes that maximum spin can only be deployed effectively by moving forward during the backswing. Instead of getting wide and shallow, Mayo says,

you need to be effectively steepening the club path and your angle of attack into the ball. I don't teach a method, Mayo said, I explain mathematics. Hovland immediately gravitated to the numbers. He liked seeing verifiable data in front of him. Minutes into their first practice session, Mayo says Hovland was hitting crisp tour quality short game shots. The commonly held belief that Hovland's full swing approach,

particularly the way he bowed his wrist in the downswing, made it difficult for him to chip was nonsense in Mayo's opinion. He showed Hovland videos of Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka chipping and winning majors. All of them, he pointed out, bow their left wrist in the downswing. The steepest angle of attack that I've ever measured, and I've measured a lot of them is 17 degrees down, Mayo said. And that was Victor Hovland hitting a perfect shot.

I have never ever at any level had a golfer come to me and say, Joe, I'm a terrible chipper. And then when I put them on the track, man, they're 10 or 12 degrees down. You might be out there somewhere with Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monster, but I got a shitload of bad chippers that are one degree down, two degrees down or three degrees down. The months that followed felt to Mayo

like he grabbed onto a rocket ship. Alvin finished third at the players championship, then grabbed the opening round lead at the Masters and remained in contention much of the weekend. At the PGA Championship at Oak Hill, Hovland had a real chance to win his first major, trading birdies with Brooks Koepka much of the day, never flinching until a loose drive on the 16th hole found a fairway bunker. An agonizing double bogey by Hovland let Koepka pull away, but he came away convinced he was

close to breaking through. Obviously, learning from mistakes is key, but sometimes you get enough scar tissue in there. That's not great either, Hovland said. I don't feel like I've had that scar tissue. Hovland won the memorial in June, but it was his final round 61 at the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields, a round that helped him leapfrog Fitzpatrick, Scotty Scheffler and McElroy to win.

That sent a message to the golfing world that he was done messing around. The BMW, according to McElroy, revealed a side of Hovland that no one had seen yet. Everyone sees Victor as this jovial bubbly, happy-go-lucky guy, McElroy told me. And he is, but he's also got another side of him that's ruthless. He's got an edge. I don't want this to come across as derogatory to Ricky because

Ricky is an unbelievable human being. He's so nice, which is a great quality in a person. But Victor is like Ricky with a killer instinct. As soon as the gun goes off, it doesn't matter who you are, if you're friends with him or not friends with him. I felt like I knew it, but I really saw it in that last round at the BMW. As soon as he got a sniff, he was all business. For a professional golfer, that's such a good thing to have. Not too many people have both. Hovland and Mayo looked like the feel-good story of the instructional world. Mayo didn't feel like he was teaching Hovland as much as he was unlocking something already

there. Hovland started gaining as he was unlocking something already there. Hovland started gaining shots around the green instead of losing them. Mayo was intense and always bursting with energy, and Hovland's personality was laconic and subdued, but their partnership worked. They often ate meals together, even visited Graceland together when the PGA Tour came to Memphis. They loved talking about their quirky shared interests, UFOs, ghosts and poker. He's a foodie and he loves Greek food, Mayo said. So he'd take me to his

favorite Greek restaurants. When Hovland won the Tour Championship in August, getting up and down from the bunker for a final round 63, he bear hugged Mayo as he came off the 18th green. That's when I knew this kid is the best player in the world, Mayo said. Without question. That was the best moment. Hovland gushed about his swing coach in the winners press conference.

I like picking people's brains and he's an interesting brain to pick, Hovland said. Ever since he's been on the team, it's been great to have someone kind of look at my game from a completely different standpoint. He might be one of the only instructors that never watches golf. So when he came on board, he had no idea how I played, what it was doing and what it looked like. He kind of had a fresh set of eyes. I do like trying new things because it's fun. Hovind finished 2023 gaining strokes around the green for the first time in his career. It wasn't by much, plus.08, but just being an average chipper solidified his spot as one of the best players in the world.

When he chipped in on the opening hole, the Ryder Cup, even his American opponents were in awe. They understood how far he'd come. Everyone out here can appreciate how much time and work he's put into that, Fowler said. That doesn't happen overnight. Yes, you could go hit that shot when you're working on something on the range. It's easy because you're free. But when you're able to put the amount of reps in that you can pull it off in the competition on the biggest stage, that says a lot. He works his ass off and he loves the grind. In November of 2023, Mayo says he got a call from Hovland. It was time, Hovland said, for them to part ways.

He thanked Mayo for what he'd done, said he wouldn't be the player he was without Mayo's help, but he just wanted to do things on his own. Mayo insists he wasn't upset. He'd been predicting, even hoping, that this day would come eventually. Victor, I love that. I want you to do it on your own. Mayo told him. According to Mayo, there was no fighting, no animosity, no bad blood.

My number one goal with this kid, Mayo said, was for him to no longer need me. Mayo told several friends during the year they'd spent together that once Havan got his swing dialed, he wouldn't need his coach any longer. And that was the way it should be. Mayo wasn't interested in getting famous. He never wanted to be the guy nudging his way into the frame every time Hovland held up a trophy. A good teacher, he believed, has succeeded when the pupil feels confident enough to walk

alone. That said, Mayo saw it as a chance to reflect on his own intensity. He came to understand some things about himself. I admit that I have a very strong personality, Mayo said. That's one of my many, many flaws in life. I realize being around me for a year full time like we were is probably pretty tough. Without question, I know I'm hard to handle for a long period of time. Mayo said he suspects that working with him is not all that different from the way that Indiana university basketball players felt having played for coach

Bobby Knight. It's something I've struggled with my entire life. Mayo told me I've been this way since I was a young man. We've all got flaws. Nobody is perfect. People who know me will tell you Joe is intense. Joe is tough. Joe who know me will tell you, Joe is intense, Joe is tough, Joe is hard to handle. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if I had to be honest, if you threaten

me with going to prison if I wasn't honest with you, then I'd say my personality was probably part of Victor wanting to do it on his own. Hovland declined several opportunities to share his perspective on why he and Mayo initially split. But it sent him on a mission to find new perspectives. In March, he started working with Grant Waite, a former tour pro. I'm a very curious guy. I like to ask questions, Hovland said prior to the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Sometimes when you ask a question and you get some answers that leads you down a different path and opens up some new questions and you pursue a different path. I just kind of want to see where it goes. I've always liked to

improve and expand my knowledge and it just happened to lead me down the road to grant weight. By April, he and weight had parted ways. He began working with Dana Dahlquist, a bio mechanics expert who has worked with Bryson DeChambeau and teaches at a public golf course in Long Beach. Hovland told people he's still trying to find his way back to the swing he had in 2020 and 2021, when he loved the flush feeling of the ball

coming off his club face. But admittedly, that was a handful of swing patterns ago. The kind of frustrating part is when you're trying to figure things out and you don't necessarily see the progress and you don't know exactly if this is the right road ahead, Hodlund said. Searching for a feeling with his irons left him with very little time to work on his short game and as a result his chipping declined and grew as bad as it's ever been.

Prior to the PGA Championship, Hodlund's strokes gained around the green stat was negative point seven four, easily the worst mark of his career. At the players in March, he lost one point seven five strokes around the green, the second worst number of his career for a single tournament and the fourth worst number posted by any player in a PGA Tour event this year. Multiple people who interacted with him this season said he seemed despondent, almost like a light had gone out behind his eyes. After missing the cut at the Masters, he withdrew from the RBC Heritage and didn't enter a tournament

for almost a month. He returned for the Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow, but there were still major holes in his game. He finished tied for 24th, 18 shots behind the winner Rory McElroy. One person who knows Hovland well and talks to him often believes he became ensnared in a web of his own curiosity that he seemed to be trying to blend different thoughts from different instructors. He can't seem to resist going down endless YouTube or tik tok rabbit holes. And eventually it short circuited something in his

brain. I think what made him and Joe work is they're crazy kind of aligned, said one person who asked for anonymity so they could speak freely. Victor can be kind of arrogant about what he knows. Joe was able to tell him when he was wrong. And Victor was willing to buy into the program. Holland has little interest in money, according to several people close to him.

He became frustrated this year with the unending rumors that he might be headed to live and the constant cycle of denying them. He has been unhappy with the PGA Tour leadership and has made it clear but live did not interest him. There are some things about him that have never changed, according to Dar, who coached him at Oklahoma State. He literally doesn't care about anything except trying to see how good he can be at golf, Dar said.

He doesn't need a fancy car. He doesn't need a fancy house. He doesn't need things. He's completely driven to see how good he can become. He's driven to reach his full potential, and I think that's why you see him going through these swing changes. The week before the PGA Championship,

Hoeven felt his game was in such a miserable state. He briefly considered withdrawing. Why show up in Kentucky when he felt utterly lost? I was almost considering pulling out of this event because I just wasn't playing good at all. Hovind said later, things didn't feel very good. And when they don't feel good, it's like, what's the point of going and playing? I'd rather just go and work on it. Instead, he did something unexpected. He called

Mayo and asked if they could talk. The two men met up in Las Vegas where they talked for hours. They each admitted to some errors in the relationship. Afterward, Mayo watched Hovland hit balls for 10 minutes. He was aghast at what a mess his swing was. They went back to basics, essentially pushing the reset button, a few tweaks to his setup, a few familiar feels. Within five minutes, Hovind started to flush it again.

Hovind was surprised, but Mayo wasn't. He always knew the talent hadn't deserted him. At the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla, Haven looked like his old self for the first time all year. He attacked pins. He hit a bullet fade that he could trust off the tee. He putted like a dream. And most impressive of all, he chipped effectively.

He gained.38 strokes around the green. His best performance of the year by far. He climbed into contention with a 66 on Friday and another on Saturday. And when Xander Schauffele bogey the 10th hole on Sunday afternoon, the unthinkable suddenly seemed possible. Hovland was just one shot off the lead.

He could not, however, get any closer. The hole, which seemed so big for three days, suddenly seemed like there was a lid on the cup. Any chance to get into a playoff slipped away on the 18th when he missed a 10 footer for Birdie, then missed a two footer for Parr. He slid into third place, his second straight year of finishing in the top five of the PGA Championship.

It was hard to be too disappointed, however, especially considering where he began the week. It looked like the mad scientist of swing theory had emerged on the other side of an experiment gone awry. He never doubted his abilities, he said. His machinery had just gone haywire. Channeling his old feels permanently, though, has proved to be elusive. Alvin was not able to build on his performance at the PGA, and his short game has now regressed

to previous levels. At the 2024 US Open, he missed the cut and lost 1.85 strokes around the greens, his worst number in several years. He also missed the cut at the Open Championship and was never in contention for a medal at the Paris Olympics. Before the first FedExCup playoff event in Memphis, Hovland expounded for the first time all year about why things got so out of whack. I don't want to get super technical with this, but basically my pattern got off, Hovland

said. The things that I did in my swing that made me good, that made me be able to predict a certain ball flight, I went home and tried to do a certain move, not necessarily because 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. And in the off season, I made a conscious effort to try to cut the ball more. And I ruined a relationship that happens in my swing

that makes it really difficult to control the face. I know exactly why it happened. And now it's just a process of getting it back to where I was. But at least I have all the data and facts on the table to go about it. I'm super pumped about where I'm headed. Hovland played some of his best golf of the season in Memphis. He climbed into contention with a 63 on Friday, and on Sunday, he briefly grabbed a share of the lead.

But on the 71st hole, he dumped his approach into a greenside bunker, and his short game once again let him down. He made a bogey, then couldn't birdie the 18th despite a stellar approach. He finished two shots behind Tadeki Matsuyama and left the course in frustration without speaking to the media. It's possible that this year is an anomaly, that Hovland's elite talent will return in 2025 once he has a full offseason to work with Mayo. But Chambly, when I asked to get his thoughts,

was less certain. The same thing that helped Victor lose his way is the same thing he thinks is going to get him back. And that's a terrible place to be, Chambly said. There is so much information readily available. You can be on the range and pull up YouTube. While I'm on YouTube all day and I'm not trying to discover some secret,

I'm trying to look at players golf swing so I can discuss it. But at every turn I find conflicting information. The reason Victor won't commit to any one of these is I think he believes if he talks to 20 of them, he's clever enough to figure out their commonalities. Then he can go work with one for a little bit and then another for a little bit. A great golf swing in the end might be like a magnificent painting, the kind that Hovland used to stare at in museums back when he had the time.

Before any artist begins to paint, it helps to understand the importance of basic elements like composition and brushstrokes. A teacher is invaluable at this stage. But ultimately, art is singular to its creator. It is not the work of a committee. A painting needs to be cared for and maintained, at worst carefully restored to its original glory if it starts to deteriorate. But if you can't leave it alone, you risk muddying it to the point where the elements

that once made it brilliant are harder and harder to recognize. It becomes a curiosity, maybe even a cautionary tale. Thanks for listening. I'm Kevin Van Volkenberg, editorial director at No Laying Up. Email me at kvv at nolayingup.com. For Fandle, it must be 21 older and president select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 and older and president DC gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here.

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