Viktor Hovland finally bagged a PGA Tour win at one of the biggest events this season. And then some.
Hovland has won in each of the last four seasons on Tour, but fellow pro Edoardo Molinari, who doubles as Hovland’s performance coach, noted that his previous wins shared something in common.
Indeed, all of his Tour wins before 2023 had been on tropical islands: in Puerto Rico and twice in Mexico near Cancun, plus two more unofficial titles in The Bahamas. It’s ironic given that Hovland grew up in the cold of Norway.
“Sometimes I tease him that it’s about time he wins on a serious golf course, not at a tourist place,” Molinari said.
Muirfield Village Golf Club, the course Jack Nicklaus built near his childhood home in Dublin, Ohio, and annual host of the Memorial, certainly qualifies as “a serious course.” As does Olympia Fields, a former major championship site near Chicago where Hovland shot a final-round 61 to win the BMW Championship in August. The same goes for East Lake in Atlanta, where Hovland ran away with the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup Playoffs title, his second win in two weeks.
