Victor Hovland played super golf for a long time during the final round of The Players Championship, but in the end things changed for the 24-year-old.
After playing brilliantly on the first 11 holes, Victor Hovland truly fought his way to victory in the Players Championship – a tournament many have dubbed the “Fifth Grand Slam”.
With his victory or second place alone, Hovland will take first place in the world.
Hovland was below par by five strokes for the round after the first 11 holes, but failed to keep pace on the last seven holes. Admittedly, he also played there for a number of good birding chances, but after several bad chips and a drive in the water on the 18th hole (his only forest on the Tour), Hovland went twice above par in the last seven holes.
I play golf really well all week. It’s a little embarrassing, of course. A couple of bad ghost at noon nine, no birdie at 16 and then in the water from a tee at 18. Not how you want to end it, but a lot of fun I’ve been doing this week, and I’m still getting a good championship In the most powerful field in the world. that’s cool. I rely on it more, Hovland tells Discovery+.
Thus, it was a three-stroke tie-breaker, and Hovland finished a total of seven equal-strokes for the championship.
She held ninth place, six strokes behind winner Cameron Smith. While Smith took home $3.6 million, 32.5 million NOK in prize money, Hovland took home a $525,000 prize check, the equivalent of NOK 4.74 million.
In doing so, Hovland will retain third place in the world rankings, but already have a new opportunity later this week to take over the top spot. On Thursday, Valspar starts Championzip, where Hovland finished last year in third.
When Victor Hovland finished the second round of the Players Championship by going three strokes over par in the last two slots, victory seemed a long way off. The Norwegian had fallen in 50th place, and had seven strokes in the lead – despite the fact that he was among the players who escaped the worst of conditions as the wind swept through Saturday (Hovland hit only one stroke on Saturday after several delays. Mark the early days ).
And the third round, which took place on Sunday and Monday, wasn’t that big either. But before the match was interrupted by darkness on Sunday, Hovland kept up with Eagle on hole 2 (11th place on the Tour). On Monday, he completed the third round with a fixed golf and a big exclamation point—a hole-in-a-hole on an 8-hole.
Hovland finished the third round with four sub-par strokes, thus playing his way to the joint 20th place. Bullets to the lead were also cut into five strokes. After several rounds with expensive errors and a bit of level playing with the racket, Hovland looked really spoiled during the last round.
After playing eleven holes, he was five strokes below par a day, and he cut the lead into two strokes. Hovland’s first big hole error came next, when he nearly hit the green with the first shot on hole 4, but then hit the flag all the way to the water on the second shot:
And so the first bogey of the round came, but Hovland responded quickly and after a birdie on the 14th hole was suddenly in the lead split.
However, he did not stay in the lead for long. A bogey on the 15th hole, combined with good play from several competitors, meant he ended up far behind in the battle for victory and a final bogey on the 18th hole made it a round of 69 strokes, three strokes under par.
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