Viktor is the victor

Writing from Olympia Fields, Illinois

Sunday, August 20, 2023

Viktor Hovland knocked down everything but the Olympia Fields clock tower on Sunday. His 9-under par 61 on the club’s famed North Course accomplished the following:

1. It vaulted him from a tie for fifth at daybreak to first place, bringing him the title in the 120th playing of the third-oldest championship in world professional golf. His total of 17-under-par 263 earned him a two-stroke victory over world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and Matt Fitzpatrick. Rory McIlroy was fourth at 12-under 268.

2. It was a course record, relegating the 62s of Max Homa and Sam Burns on Friday and Saturday to second place in Olympia’s history book.

3. His closing 7-under 28 – eight 3s and a solitary 4 – matched the nine-hole record for the Western Open / BMW Championship.

4. It jumped him into second in the PGA Tour’s points race, just behind Scottie Scheffler, who along with Fitzpatrick led Hovland by four strokes at the turn and saw himself passed like he was on a plow horse and Hovland was in an Indy car.

5. It earned Hovland pocket money of $3.6 million.

Not a bad way for a fellow born in Norway to spend four hours in a 91-degree cauldron with a 116-degree heat index as a sweltering gallery of about 30,000 watched.

The first of those achievements is the one that will be engraved on the J.K. Wadley Trophy and in the history books. The second and third make the mind reel. Early-week rains aside, Olympia Fields still was a test. Hovland aced it.

He made everything but an ace, or a deuce, oddly enough, on Sunday. But 13 3s overall will do. For the week, he made 22 birdies, an eagle and seven bogeys. And only one 2, a birdie on the par-3 13th on Friday.

Sunday’s numbers were a story themselves.

The front nine: 443 433 534 – 33

The back nine: 333 334 333 – 28 for 61 and 263.

“To win at a place like this and amongst the best players in the world, making seven birdies the last nine holes, it’s pretty cool,” Hovland said. “I hit a lot of fairways and hit a lot of greens, and my putter just caught fire the last couple days.

“Here we are.”

Hovland, with brilliant play on the back nine, chased Scheffler and Fitzpatrick for most of the round before sinking an 8-foot, 9-inch birdie putt on the par-4 17th set up by a 157-yard 9-iron to match Scheffler at 16-under. By this point, even with birdies on the 15th and 16th, Fitzpatrick, thanks to an ill-timed bogey on the 14th, where he failed to get up-and-down from green side rough, was at 15-under. He needed to go birdie-birdie on the last two holes, and could not.

Hovland needed to do the same, and did. On the 18th, he hammered a 157-yard pitching wedge to 6 feet, 7 inches and dropped it like a cold-blooded executioner. Then came this thought:

“I felt like I could win it outright,” Hovland said. “Until then, I had no idea what was going on. I was just going to try to play well and keep making birdies.”

Scheffler, playing two groups behind Hovland, bogeyed the 17th by three-putting from 22 feet after a blistering drive of 323 yards. The old saw “drive for show, putt for dough” comes to mind.

“Obviously kind of took me out of it,” Scheffler said. “I felt I hit my line (on the left-to-right putt) and I look up and it just stayed on the right edge the whole time.

“It’s definitely frustrating.”

He also duffed a chip on the par-5 15th, though recovered for a par.

“It was just a little bump-and-run,” Scheffler said. “The second bounce was the one that really got me. I thought I was going to one-hop it onto the green but it hit pop annua and kind of stopped.

“Viktor went out and just really beat me today.”

And everyone else, including Fitzpatrick, who like Scheffler will have to console himself with $1.76 million.

“Can’t do anything about 61,” Fitzpatrick said, then grinned and said that when he grabbed him by the shouders, “I called him a little shit.”

McIlroy, playing alongside Hovland, was impressed, though less profanely.

“I was marking his card (in the scoring room) and I’m like, ‘Oh, you only made one 4 on the back nine, the rest 3s.’ So it adds up to a nice little 28 for him,” McIlroy said. “It was great to see. I sort of realized around 14, 15 something pretty special was happening.

“He just keeps his foot on the pedal.”

As champions do.

The bubble bursts for a few

In the end, not even an opening pair of 66s could save Chris Kirk from falling out of the top 30 in the PGA Tour’s points derby. He fell from 29th to 32nd, as Matt Fitzpatrick, whose tie for second in the tournament jumped him to 10th in the standings, climbed into the select 30 who play next week at East Lake.

Sahith Theegala, 31st at the start of the week, finished there thanks to bogeying the 18th hole. He was 30th until then, and that 5 moved Justin Spieth back into next week’s money race.

Tyrrell Hatton, who tied for 34th at 1-over 281 thanks to a bogey at the last, thought he was dead with that 5. He barely got his second shot out of a fairway bunker, threw his club and watched it nearly conk him in the head. But he ended up 29th in the points race and so lives to play another day.

Around Olympia Fields

Hovland trivia: His 61 was the lowest round by a PGA Tour winner this year and the lowest final round in the PGA Tour’s postseason since it began in 2007. It was his second victory of the season, following the Memorial at Muirfield Village, and his fifth on the American tour. He believes it’s his lowest score, in competition or not. “I’ve shot 61 a couple times,” he said. “Never 59 or even a 60, I think, in even a practice round. I guess we’ve still got some more work to do.” He considered his approach from the left rough on the par-4 14th, a low 8-iron from 162 yards to 19 inches, his best shot of the round. “It was just one of those days, and that was maybe the perfect shot that encapsulated the whole round.” … Hovland and McIlroy could be a tremendous Ryder Cup pairing. They had a best-ball 58 on Sunday. … Sunday’s scoring average of 68.694 strokes lowered the average for the week to 69.634 on the par-70 layout. The 18th hole was the toughest each round, while the par-5 first was the easiest for the week. 

– Tim Cronin