Viktor Hovland says what we're all thinking as he opens up on 'miserable' year

PGA Tour and Ryder Cup star Viktor Hovland has given a bleak assessment of his season ahead of the BMW Championship in Colorado.

Ben Smith

22 Aug 2024

Viktor Hovland says he has no right to be at the BMW Championship this week.

The reigning FedExCup champion heads into the second leg of the playoffs after a surprisingly poor season by his standards.

After helping Europe win back the Ryder Cup last September, Hovland would've likely thought he could get his hands on a first major championship in 2024.

His heroics in the biennial showdown came after he triumphed at East Lake and scooped the $18,000,000 bonus.

But for large parts of the 2024 campaign, Hovland's game has completely deserted him.

He ditched his coach Joe Mayo at the turn of the year and we saw Hovland suffer a complete meltdown at The Masters.

Hovland also missed cuts at the U.S. Open and The Open.

Things were so bad, Hovland previously said, that he considered not even playing the PGA Championship at Valhalla.

Hovland is back with Mayo now and the 26-year-old believes he has turned the corner.

He finished second to Hideki Matsuyama at the FedEx St. Jude Championship when he was in danger of not being able to defend his crown.

"It's pretty miserable," Hovland told reporters at Castle Pines Golf Club.

"When you're obviously playing bad golf, everyone plays bad golf occasionally, but I feel like I've always been very good at understanding why it's happened, and even if I understand why it happens, it's like, okay, how do I fix it?

"And that's been like a very difficult thing for me kind of throughout this year.

"It's like, okay, how do I stop doing what I'm currently doing that's making me not hit the shots that I want to hit?"

Hovland said at times you can feel helpless.

He continued: "But I think at the end of the day, I've kind of comforted myself in the way that, like, I'm not broken.

"It's not my mind that's gone bad and I have to, like, oh, what if I can never play golf again. It's like, no, my machine is a little bit off.

"We just need to tweak the machine a little bit and then we're back to playing good golf again.

"Whereas I feel like this game is just so stressful, especially when you're playing in front of this many people, obviously everyone is paying attention, and when you struggle, it's out there in front of everyone.

"And I think it's very easy to let that go into your head and you think it's something wrong with you instead of, like, I've always -- not blamed, but I always know that, okay, the reason why I'm hitting this certain shot, there's a mathematical reason why that is happening.

"So if I just figure out why and I go on the range and fix it, I'm going to hit good shots again.

"So I can kind of separate the mental side from the physical side in a way."

Hovland has been handed a 10.40am ET tee time with Ben An.