As the professionals say, the best time to get fit for a new driver is when you’re swinging the club well – so what better time to do it than after winning a PGA TOUR event?

Viktor Hovland, in his last PGA TOUR event start, won the 2025 Valspar Championship using his familiar Ping G425 LST driver, which is a model that released to the public back in 2021. Hovland previously conducted testing with Ping’s newest G440 models, released in 2025, but his swing wasn’t where he wanted it to be yet so it just wasn’t the right time yet for the switch.

Now, just days before the Masters, and coming off a recent win, Hovland is finally finding what he needed to see from Ping’s new G440 LST driver, which is newly equipped with a Fujikura Ventus Black VeloCore+ 6TX shaft. (Click here for a deep dive into the new Velocore Plus technology)

“Yeah, last couple days back in Orlando, I’d say my iron game has been really, really nice, but still was just having a hard time with the driver to get it exactly how I wanted to,” Hovland said in a press conference at the Masters on Tuesday. “So I asked Kenton (Oates) from Ping to see if he could send some of the new drivers that I tested in the past, but when I wasn’t swinging it well, those misses were just accentuated. I hit those – those high right shots that I had before were even higher and further to the right. I didn’t really feel like testing it. But now that my swing got in a better spot, I wanted to give it another go.”

In general, Hovland isn’t one to tinker much with his equipment. Just look at his winning setup from the Valspar Championship as proof: He still uses an old TaylorMade SIM Ti 3-wood from 2020, i210 irons from 2018 and a Ping Glide 2.0 lob wedge from 2017. He did recently experiment with a new Ping PLD Oslo “Onset” putter at The Genesis Invitational earlier this year, but he’s since switched back into his longtime putter gamer, a Ping PLD DS-72 mallet.

Hovland doesn’t switch clubs much, but he’s finding performance benefits with the new Ping G440 LST driver head and Fujikura Ventus Black VoleCore+ 6TX shaft ahead of the Masters this week.

“I guess that new shaft is a little bit stiffer at the bottom, and with the G440, it’s way more forgiving,” Hovland said. “So the heel strikes and the toe strikes I’m able to keep the ball speed up compared to the other mishits. And the spin is just way tighter. If I hit it off the toe, it doesn’t drop down to 1,700 rpm, and if I hit it off the heel, it doesn’t go 3,200 rpm. Really just excited about how much tighter the dispersion was and even getting a little bit more ball speed out with the new driver. Yeah, it’ll be exciting to see how it goes out there. Yes, the new VeloCore Plus shaft, whatever. I’m not too big into shafts and stuff.”

Hovland isn’t a gearhead, and he doesn’t do much tinkering and club experimenting week-to-week on the PGA TOUR, but he’s proving that when he finds something that works better, he is willing to make a change.