SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — “Viktor Hovland is on the range right now.”
My colleague Jamie Kennedy turned to me and said that, looking mildly confused and pleasently surpirsed. The U.S. Open’s range tracker was on his computer screen in the media center and it was lit up with rows of pink. Each row represents one shot, and Hovland’s was stacked like a pile of pancakes.
“He’s been hitting iron shots for almost an hour.”
I didn’t envision my Saturday at the U.S. Open leading me to watch the practice of a man who had already missed the cut. But I find Hovland fascinating. Some combination of the smartest, most interesting, and hardest worker on tour. It’s an itch I needed to scratch, so I walked past the leaders making their way down the first hole and over to the range.
It’s hour one of Hovland’s range session when I wander over to watch. Hovland was finishing his first bag of range bals.
Hovland is with his trainer and trusted confidant Matt Roberts, busy working between shifts before his other client, Ludvig Aberg, finishes his round. Viktor’s bag is on the ground, next to a book titled “Being Well: A Journey Into the Heart of Living Well Through a Sporting Life.”
Hovland is hitting balls at a steady clip, working through his session in waves of golf balls.
He jumps from a batch of wedges, then short irons, then mid-irons, then hybrids and woods, before resetting back to wedges. Data from his practice session showed that Hovland worked through this progression four times.
I feel a little awkward watching one of the only golfers on the range, but Hovland doesn’t even notice I’m here, which I can’t figure out is better or worse.
Hovland is focused. He pauses twice or so to check his phone, and just a handful of times to watch the third round broadcasting on the driving range’s big screen television. He works in periodic chats with Roberts, but otherwise he keeps his head down, working.
Two more bags of balls come and go. When he goes to fetch his third, I can’t help asking a few questions.
Viktor, have you always been a range rat?
“Not at all,” he says. “The driving ranges in Norway aren’t always the best, so I did most of my practice on the course. I’d drop five balls in different places for each shot, and practice that way.”
Does he enjoy marathon range sessions like this?
“I’d way rather be out there striping it, playing. But when you’re not you have to figure out why,” Hovland says.
Hovland generally seems to know the what in his golf swing, but like most things in golf, the why is the game’s eternal mystery that nobody has figured out the answer to yet.
In simple terms the focus of his golf swing right now is on his left wrist. When it flexes and bows too early on his takeaway, the clubface closes.
“When that happens, I spend the rest of my swing trying to get out of it,” he explains.
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Sometimes he times it just right. When he underdoes it, the ball goes left; when he overdoes it, it goes right. Timing is a natural element in the golf swing, but when he prevents his right wrist from flexing too early, the margin of error increases.
A common knock on Hovland is that he’s too technical—a label applied to any golfer who doesn’t espouse the virtues of artistic feel above all else. And it’s interesting that on this occasion, there’s no technology in sight of Viktor’s range session. No Trackman, no swing tech. The occasional check of a video, and little else.
How come?
“Technology is neither good nor bad. Take nuclear technology for instance. It can power cities or it can make bombs,” he says. “The tricky thing is knowing what to pay attention to, and how to use it.”
It’s why Hovland’s foundational belief in the golf swing starts with one thing.
“The ball flight will tell you everything you need to know. A good golf swing is one that’s repeatable and produces good results,” he says. “It’s easy to forget that. To get drawn into looking at lines on a screen. People will make you believe that there’s a problem to sell you something, but the ball flight will always tell you if there’s a problem or not.”
I had ambitions of outlasting Hovland’s range session, but it becomes obvious that it won’t happen. He wants to get back to work, I’ve got a golf tournament to get to. I leave him on the range. It’d be another two hours before he’d hit his final ball. 230 in total, 3 hours and 48 minutes in all. When I saw the final tally I thought of something Hovland’s answer to my final question.
Do you ever think, ‘I’m just going to do something else with my time?’
“I love golf, and I think I’m pretty good at this game,” Hovland said. “But I want to get even better.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
