Viktor Hovland ends so-so year with Hero World Challenge win

NASSAU, Bahamas – The ending was tense, but the result was the same.

Viktor Hovland, who carried a five-shot lead into the back nine Sunday, survived a shaky finish and shot a final-round 69 to edge Scottie Scheffler (68) by two at the Hero World Challenge at Albany.

“It was a lot more stressful than it should have been,” Hovland said.

Both players bogeyed the 18th hole, Hovland rolling in a 20-foot putt after hitting his second in the hazard from an awkward lie on the lip of a bunker. “When you’re standing there with a two-shot lead, that’s like the last thing you can do,” he said.

Scheffler couldn’t capitalize. Needing a birdie, he lost his approach into the waste bunker right of the green and also made bogey. After losing the world No. 1 ranking to Rory McIlroy at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina in October, he would have regained it with a win at the Hero, which provides world ranking points but not FedExCup points.

The result was the same as it was a year ago here, with Hovland and Scheffler going 1-2.

Cameron Young (68) finished third, four back.

The victory closes out a year in which Hovland did not win but nonetheless made it to the TOUR Championship, thus qualifying for the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, Maui, next month.

“It was a difficult year in terms of ball striking,” said his caddie, Shay Knight. “It wasn’t bad, but he has very high standards, and this week was about going back to his roots and hitting a cut.”

The week was also about surviving a stiff breeze for the first three rounds – Hovland credited his years at Oklahoma State in Stillwater for steeling him in the wind – and quality putting. One day after requiring only 23 putts in a 10-birdie 64, he needed just 24 putts in the final round.

“I hit plenty of terrible shots today,” he said. “It’s making those putts and keeping yourself in it.”

Scheffler tied for the lead when he pitched in for eagle at the par-5 sixth hole, but Hovland made birdie on top of him to reclaim the lead by himself. The 20-man Hero would come down to a game of match play between them.

The reigning champion of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, Scheffler is a notoriously tough opponent. He beat then-world No. 1 Jon Rahm at the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits last year. But Scheffler, who held the No. 1 ranking for 30 weeks this year, was not at his best Sunday, hitting his drive into a bush and three-putting to double-bogey the par-5 ninth hole and fall five back.

Still, he kept the big picture in mind. A year ago, he had never won on the PGA TOUR, but now he has four victories, including the green jacket for winning the Masters Tournament.

“Yeah, it was definitely a fun year,” he said. “I accomplished a lot, it was definitely a lot of fun for my family and my coach and everybody, everybody that's been a part of my golf career.”

Hovland, too, has a formidable pedigree when it comes to match play. He went a combined 6-0 for the Oklahoma State Cowboys in the 2017, ’18 and ’19 NCAA Championships, and needed just 104 holes to win the 2018 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach, the third fewest for a winner since 1979.

Now he’s successfully defended his title at the Hero after doing the same last year at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba. There was a time when that was a specialty of Hero tournament host Tiger Woods, who withdrew with plantar fasciitis early in the week but watched Hovland and Scheffler play in, showing up in a cart with son Charlie on the 14th hole.

Hovland is only 25, closer to Charlie than Tiger on the odometer. There’s no telling what his future holds, but it certainly seems bright, and brighter still after the Hero. He’ll look back on that as he opens ’23 at the Sentry, not his solid but unspectacular fall, or his 15th-place FedExCup finish last season after finishing fifth in ’21.

“There were too many weeks where I just kind of had to grind and get through the round instead of showing up and attacking and feel like I was going to shoot 7, 8 under,” he said. “It was just too many times where it was, OK, if I play well, maybe I can shoot a couple under.

“That's been a little frustrating,” Hovland continued. “I feel like I still have some work to do there, but this is obviously a huge step in the right direction.”