PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Golf is a famously fickle game, and Viktor Hovland’s performance Thursday at Pebble Beach provides sufficient proof. The former FedExCup champion shot 65 one day after declaring that “I suck at (golf) right now.”

Hovland made eight birdies and just a single bogey to match the lowest round of the day at Pebble Beach. He will end the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am just one stroke behind Russell Henley, who shot 64 at Spyglass Hill, the other course in use this week. Hovland hit 12 of 14 fairways and missed just two greens.

“I can still play and today was good conditions,” Hovland said. “I hit a few really nice wedges and started making some putts. I'm trying to obviously get my mind out of the technical aspects of it and just trying to play golf.”

One year after winning the FedExCup, Hovland went winless and had just two top-10s in 2024, the fewest of his career. He still finished 12th in the FedExCup, extending his streak of five consecutive top-20 finishes, because he was T3 at the PGA Championship and T2 in the opening event of the FedExCup Playoffs, the FedEx St. Jude Championship.

Hovland briefly re-united with swing coach Joe Mayo last year but the two split again before this season. Hovland finished in the middle of the pack at The Sentry to start the 2025 season before shooting 75-73 to miss the cut in the DP World Tour’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic.

Hovland, who won the 2018 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach and was low amateur (T12) in the 2019 U.S. Open here, said Wednesday that he was “making headway,” but that the process of piecing together his swing to meet his high standards has been “extremely frustrating.”

“I do feel like I'm learning more,” he said in his pre-tournament press conference. “Even if … that domino doesn't start to fall today or tomorrow or the next day, I'm hoping the cumulative effect of that knowledge and experience, eventually I'll get over that hump and we'll turn things around. Right now it's pretty frustrating. This game of golf, as I said earlier, it's very elusive, it's counterintuitive and it's very difficult right now. But I know there's a lot of good golf in me that will be there in the future and that I've played in the past. Things will turn around soon.”