Viktor Hovland’s Swing Gamble: The Search for His Lost Form
In the autumn of 2023, Viktor Hovland was the best golfer on the planet. He had won three times that season, including back-to-back FedExCup playoff events at the BMW Championship — where he shot a final-round 61 — and the Tour Championship, claiming the FedExCup title and reaching No. 3 in the world. Then he did something almost no champion does: at the absolute peak of his powers, he decided his swing wasn’t good enough. What followed was two years of tinkering, coaching changes, and brutally honest self-examination — one of the most fascinating psychological dramas in modern golf.
The peak: how good it was
To understand the gamble, remember how good the 2023 version was. Hovland made the top 20 in all four majors that year. His ball-striking was the best on tour. He had found his swing coach, Joe Mayo, through Instagram — the most Hovland origin story imaginable for a player famous for scouring the internet for swing tips — and the partnership had produced a career season. Every change he had ever made to his swing had worked. He was, by his own description, very good at making things work.
And yet, standing on top of the sport, he looked at his swing and saw limitations. He had always been a cutter of the ball — someone whose natural shot shape moved left to right — and he wanted more. He wanted to add “draw pieces” to his game, shots that moved right to left, to become more versatile. It was the classic champion’s restlessness: the belief that even perfection can be improved.
“I made a poor decision”
The draw experiment broke something. As Hovland introduced more draw elements into his swing, he lost the control that had made him great. “He couldn’t stand over the ball and know exactly where it was going,” the PGA Tour’s own account of the saga put it. “More times than not, it was hooking left when he wasn’t expecting it.” The man who had stripe-showed the BMW Championship with a 61 no longer trusted his swing.
Hovland’s honesty about it has been striking. “I’ve always tried to push myself, and even when it was really good, I kept on pushing it,” he said, “and maybe setting too high expectations because maybe I didn’t realize how good it was or I thought it could continue to get better and better and better. For the most part of my career, every decision that I’ve made to change something up in order to play better, it has worked.” The unspoken ending: this time, it didn’t. In a January 2025 interview with the PGA Tour, he distilled two years of struggle into four words: “I made a poor decision.”
It is rare to hear an elite athlete say that so plainly. Golfers usually blame timing, or rust, or bad luck. Hovland blamed his own ambition — the optimizer’s curse of a player who could not leave well enough alone.
The coaching carousel
The swing search became a coaching saga. Hovland split with Mayo in late 2023, weeks after winning the FedExCup — a decision that stunned the golf world. They reunited ahead of the 2024 PGA Championship, with Hovland praising Mayo’s eye: “He’s really, really smart and just has a way of looking at my swing and knowing what it is right away.” That reunion lasted about seven months before they parted again ahead of the 2025 season. “We disagreed a bit about the way forward, what is best for me,” Hovland told the Norwegian press. “I feel that I have learned so much now and have so much competence that I don’t need anyone to hold my hand anymore.”
Mayo, for his part, was characteristically candid, admitting he has “a very strong personality” and is “hard to take in large doses.” In between the Mayo chapters came Grant Waite and Dana Dahlquist in 2024, then T.J. Yeaton in 2025. By one count, Hovland has worked with more than half a dozen swing instructors since turning professional — including three in 2024 alone. The 2024 season was a down year by his standards: just two top-10 finishes in sixteen starts.
There were flashes of the old magic. In 2025 he won the Travelers Championship, a signature event, and posted solid finishes at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Players Championship, and the Masters. But he also missed the cut at each of the year’s final three majors — the kind of inconsistency that would have been unthinkable in 2023.
The psychology of the tinkerer
What makes Hovland’s story compelling is not the technical detail of the swing — draw bias, face angles, path numbers — but the psychology underneath it. This is a player whose entire career was built on self-improvement. He got to the PGA Tour by teaching himself, by watching videos, by out-working and out-thinking everyone. The optimizer’s mindset was his superpower. Then it became his trap.
Sports psychologists would recognize the pattern: the expert who cannot tolerate the plateau, who mistakes the discomfort of mastery for a problem to be solved. Hovland himself diagnosed it. He kept pushing when things were good because pushing had always worked — until the one time the pushing broke the thing that was working. His 2024 season, played mostly at home practicing rather than competing, was the sound of a perfectionist trying to think his way out of a problem that thinking had created.
And yet there is something admirable in the refusal to accept it. Lesser players would have protected the 2023 swing like a museum piece. Hovland bet that he could build something better, lost the bet, admitted it publicly, and kept working. “Credit to myself, I’m very good at making things work,” he said during the darkest stretch. “I think I’m talented in that way, but it definitely helps when the swing is also in a good spot. So we’ve got a little bit of work to do, but that’s kind of a challenge and it’s fun.”
The reunion — again
In August 2025, ahead of the BMW Championship — the scene of the 61, the scene of the peak — Hovland confirmed he had reunited with Mayo yet again. “I already feel we have made great progress,” he said, in comments translated from Norwegian. “It feels right. Joe is the main man now.” The circle, for now, is closed: back to the coach, back to the tournament, back to the place where it all started to unravel.
Whether the old form returns is golf’s most interesting open question. But Hovland has already given the sport something valuable: a completely honest public record of what happens when greatness tries to become greater and fails. Most athletes hide the tinkering. He narrated it, swing by swing, coach by coach, poor decision by poor decision. The gamble may yet pay off. And if it doesn’t, the search itself was unmistakably his — the optimizer, optimizing, all the way down.
The swing saga: a timeline
Golf has seen slumps before, but rarely one so public, so analyzed, and so self-inflicted at the very top of the sport. The full chronology:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2023 | The career season: wins the Memorial and the BMW Championship (closing with a 61), then the Tour Championship to become FedExCup champion. Top-20 in all four majors; the best ball-striker on tour. |
| Late 2023 | Splits with coach Joe Mayo just weeks after the FedExCup win — stunning the golf world — and begins experimenting with a draw-biased swing. |
| Spring 2024 | The experiment breaks something. The new move produces unexpected hooks; Hovland can no longer stand over the ball knowing where it is going. Missed cuts and mid-field finishes follow. |
| May 2024 | Reunites with Mayo ahead of the PGA Championship, praising his coach’s eye for the swing. |
| Late 2024 | Parts with Mayo again after about seven months: “We disagreed a bit about the way forward,” he told the Norwegian press. |
| 2025 | The search continues through the season — the tinkerer still tinkering. |
| August 2025 | Reunites with Mayo yet again ahead of the BMW Championship, scene of the 61 and the peak: “Joe is the main man now.” |
Hovland by the numbers
The gamble only makes sense against the backdrop of how good the 2023 version was:
- 6 — PGA Tour wins: Puerto Rico (2020), Mayakoba (2020 and 2021), the Memorial, the BMW Championship, and the Tour Championship (2023).
- 1st — Norwegian to win on the PGA Tour (Puerto Rico, 2020).
- 2018 — U.S. Amateur champion; low amateur at the 2019 U.S. Open before turning professional.
- 2nd — best major finish: runner-up at the 2023 PGA Championship.
- 2023 — FedExCup champion and a winning Ryder Cup team member in Rome.
- Oklahoma State — the collegiate program where the self-taught swing analyst became a star.
FAQ: Viktor Hovland’s swing change
Why did Viktor Hovland change his swing?
Even at his peak, he kept pushing. After the 2023 season he began introducing draw elements into his swing, seeking more control — the optimizer’s mindset that had built his career. Instead, he lost the control he had.
Who is Joe Mayo?
The coach Hovland famously found through Instagram. Mayo was credited with transforming Hovland’s short game ahead of the 2023 season — the final piece of the career year — which made the split weeks after the FedExCup win so shocking.
How many times have Hovland and Mayo split up?
Three acts so far: the split in late 2023, a reunion ahead of the 2024 PGA Championship, another parting about seven months later — and a second reunion in August 2025 ahead of the BMW Championship.
What is Viktor Hovland’s best major result?
Runner-up at the 2023 PGA Championship, behind Brooks Koepka. He also finished in the top 20 of all four majors in 2023.
What exactly went wrong with the draw experiment?
In the PGA Tour’s own telling: he could not stand over the ball and know where it was going — “more times than not, it was hooking left when he wasn’t expecting it.” Trust, the currency of elite golf, evaporated.
Has Viktor Hovland won since 2023?
The search for the lost form is the story. As covered here, the saga reached its latest chapter with the August 2025 reunion with Mayo — whether the old form returns remains golf’s most interesting open question.
Sources & Further Reading
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