As Viktor Hovland‘s stature has grown in the game, the Ryder Cup star has not been afraid of voicing his opinions.
The Norwegian has remained loyal to the PGA Tour amid plenty of LIV Golf rumors, but he hasn’t been giving his home circuit an easy ride in recent months.
In December, he said he “totally understands” why Jon Rahm left for LIV Golf and that the PGA Tour had done “such a bad job.” Then last week he called the current state of golf both “comical” and “sad.”
Hovland, who had the standout season of his career in 2023 when he won two PGA Tour events as well as the FedEx Cup, has managed just one top-20 so far this year after switching swing coaches while also relocating from Oklahoma to Florida.
He tees it up at the Players Championship this week at TPC Sawgrass, where he had plenty of interesting things to say in his pre-tournament press conference…
On PGA Tour leadership
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Hovland has been critical of PGA Tour leadership recently, and he believes Monahan should “take ownership” of his mistakes.
“The thing is, like, I play golf for a living. I don’t know exactly what should have been done because at the end of the day I don’t have all the information, and I don’t know that — I can’t just say, okay, this is what exactly needs to be done or should have been done,” he said.
“But at the same time, there were some things that were said that has been walked back on and then things have been very contradictory. As a leader of an organization, I will want a person like that to take some ownership and say, hey, we made a couple of mistakes, but this is how we’re going to rectify it, instead of kind of sweeping it under the rug, which I felt like has been done to a certain degree.
“So I don’t mind people making mistakes. We all make mistakes. But I think when you make a mistake you got to own up to it and say, hey, we’re trying to do better here, and this is how we’re going to do it.”
Signature events and field sizes
This week’s Players Championship has a 144-man field with a 36-hole cut, unlike some of the new big-money Signature Events
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The PGA Tour’s future is still currently unknown after the new SSG deal and dealings with LIV’s backers, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, still going on behind-the-scenes.
The landscape has forced big changes to the tour’s schedule, including the introduction of the controversial Signature Events – which feature smaller fields and huge prize funds.
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