Viktor Hovland ignores his own U.S. open game plan…and wins

Oakmont, Pennsylvania – Two years ago, Viktor Hovland developed a Sunday scramble at the PGA Championship, a strategy for the struggle strategy since its inception.

“Yes, another boring answer,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a lesson that can get too crazy. You have to be smart, play in the middle of the veggies, give yourself a lot of looks and hopefully make the putter hot.”

Hofland speaks on the verge of career-changing victory. Comfortable but not calm, hungry but not desperate. For most of his four-round matches in Rochester in 2023, he agreed: He was good at tactical and safe. He “wiped the center of the green.” He fired carefully at the pin. He avoided the mistake. When the score counted behind 72 holes, something interesting happened: he got lost.

The two years after Hovland’s 2023 PGA loss to Brooks Koepka is confusing, not only because Hovland sometimes seems to lose his golf swing, but also because he seems to lose his mind. Everywhere in the past 24 months, every component that came together in PGA has made Hovland appear on the verge of Golf’s next winner superstar disappearing into the mist. He changed his coach, his equipment, and his swing. He calls himself a “certified nut.” When his game was at the lowest level, he was once the Grand Slam event for the 2024 PGA champion.

Hovland arrived in the United States and opened a fundamentally different player. He is two years older and has two years of scar tissue. Instead of talking to boring cliches, he has occasional fanatical re-joining. He explained the depth of his struggle. In many ways, he is an important champion and he is more convincing.

This week’s tournament host Oakmont offers Hovland the opportunity to resurrect the blueprint from Rochester. The course was a brutal test, just like Oak Hill two years ago. Success will not be about having the best game, but about determining success through the most stable hands.

But from the second game, it was obvious that Hofland’s game had already decided on another kind of wit. He blows up his first T-shirt shooting OB, gets the unplayable taboo, and carries out the round and open taboo. In largely dry and unusual state, he hit only nine of 14 fairways on Saturday, comparable to the average average of 60% this week, ranking 27th in the field.

His highlight of the day was on the 17-shot driveable 4 when he threw a miraculous birdie out of the tough toughness after nearly shooting his tee into the stands. It’s one of several impossible savings in some absolutely topsy golf courses – the effort required to win a career first major on a course like Oakmont isn’t that kind of effort.

However, when he stepped out of the 18th green under the toughest professional 54-hole mark in recent memory, Hofland scored better than anything other than 153.

So, what did he do? His answer revealed.

“Of course, we all want to win, which is why we practice so hard,” he said. “But I want to be as passionate as I want to play. I want to stand on the tee and play the shots I envisioned. It bothers me when the ball doesn’t do that.”

It turns out that Hofland has a lot of experience on the side. This is how he learns games. He learned tolerate This is how he landed at the top of the rankings, but he hasn’t learned to accept it yet.

“I felt like the way I became good at golf was a suboptimal one I had to compete with,” Hofland said. “When I was a kid, I had a big time with a big cut, but I learned to score.

If this U.S. Open has proven to be a success in Hovland, it is to put the ball in a strait. It was sometimes impossible for him to do so crazy, but it was not accidental.

“I feel like I’m mature a lot and just seeing more things happening,” Hofland said. “I know the need to win a big championship, so I know the shots to hit and the shots that don’t try to hit. It feels like I can do better, just have that driver sorted out and I can do it. So I’m proud, like I’m proud, I’m close, but the driver still frustrated me, which frustrated me.”

Since our past two years of confusion, our perch is easy to forget, and Hofland was also frustrated at the 2023 PGA Championship. In his bland, confident press conference, he returned to the mountains and bombed the ball into the night and won praise from Rory McIlroy in his efforts.

When the sun sets on Saturday night at the 2025 U.S. Open, Hovland returns to find the answer as he approaches the driver at 9 p.m.

This is the real Viktor Hovland. Like the old guy, but there are many differences.