AUSTIN, Texas — When Viktor Hovland steps on the tee box Wednesday morning at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, it will mark the first time that the burgeoning PGA Tour star from Norway has ever taken a swing on a course in Austin.
But he’s certainly no stranger to area golf fans, especially those that follow collegiate golf.
Hovland enjoyed an All-American career at Oklahoma State, where he helped lead the Cowboys to the Big 12 Conference championship as a junior in 2019. He earned the coveted Ben Hogan Award later that year, which is given annually to the top men’s college golfer.
Since then, it’s been a fast rise up the rankings for the fresh-faced 23-year-old, the No. 13 seed at the tournament who is ranked No. 31 in the world and will be part of a challenging but winnable group that includes steady American Kevin Streelman, native Texan Abraham Ancer and Austrian Bernd Weisberger, a star in Europe who has yet to match that success in the States. Hovland, the first Norwegian man to win a PGA Tour event, is a sneaky dark horse to win the event with 28-1 odds.
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But the Match Play offers a unique challenge for Hovland, who hasn’t competed in match play since his amateur days.
“I do feel like I’m a newcomer still,” Hovland said Tuesday after a practice round at sun-splashed Austin Country Club. “I haven’t played that many WGCs out here, and it’s the first time teeing it up here in Austin, so there’s still a lot of things that are new. (But) I’m going into the event thinking I can do pretty well, even though I am a first-timer here.”
Even though Hovland spent three years at Oklahoma State and seriously considered joining the golf programs at Texas Tech and TCU, he has never played a competitive round in Austin. The Hill Country terrain immediately caught his eye, as did some of the opportunities for those daring enough to flirt with disaster while navigating around the course’s deep pot bunkers.
“It’s pretty quirky with the rolling terrain, and it’s a great match-play course,” he said. “I feel like you can really get it going and you can take a couple of risks where you probably wouldn’t have taken them in stroke play, so I think it will be an interesting tournament this week.”
And how does such risk arise in match play compared to stroke play?
“One example is just like if you’re four (strokes) down with six to play, you don’t really have a choice but to maybe squeeze an iron shot a little bit closer than you would have if it was a stroke play event,” Hovland said. “So it just kind of changes the dynamic a little bit, depending upon what, if you’re up or down or, yeah, what the match is.”
