Not to diminish his achievement, but the best part of Norway’s Viktor Hovland winning back-to-back titles at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba has been listening to the passionate and emphatic calls of Per Haugsrud and Henrik Bjornstad for Eurosport Norway.
“He makes it again! Our boy,” Bjornstad exclaimed in 2020. “Look how ice cold he is. He’s unreal that kid! What a star.”
Pull it up on YouTube if you haven’t heard them. Even for Hovland, it holds special significance, especially having Bjornstad, who was the first Norwegian golfer to play the PGA Tour, on the call. When Hovland was 13 years old and growing up in Oslo, Bjornstad retired from the pro ranks and took over coaching Norway’s elite junior team.
“I was a little starstruck,” Hovland said. “A few years later he’s commentating my wins on Tour. I think that was pretty cool. Obviously the emotions there were very genuine. It’s cool to listen to.”
Bjornstad and his cohort might lose their collective minds if the 25-year-old Hovland wins again at El Camaleón Golf Course at Mayakoba in Riviera Maya, Mexico. The last player to win a single Tour event three years in a row is Steve Stricker at the John Deere Classic (2009, 2010, 2011), and in the last 40 seasons on the Tour only three players have done so – Tiger Woods (an astounding six different times) and Stuart Appleby at the Sentry Tournament of Champions (2004-06) are the others.
“I loved it even before winning it two times,” Hovland said during his pre-tournament interview on Wednesday. “To come back here as a two-time champion is very special. Yeah, see if I can add another one this week.”
Hovland considers El Camaleon, a par-71 layout playing to 7,017 yards, one of the few courses where the fourth-year pro feels like a veteran. He played the World Amateur Team Championship there in 2016 when Norway had its best finish, a T-5, and made his PGA Tour debut as an amateur there in 2018 and missed the cut by a stroke. The next year, as a pro, he missed the cut by a stroke. The last two year’s he’s gotten revenge. In 2020, Hovland was seven strokes back after 36 holes and said to his caddie, “I wish I could have one of those weeks where I put the putting and…
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