VIKTOR GOES HIS OWN WAY

It’s not just his talent that’s one of a kind. The 25-year old power player from Norway thinks differently than your average Tour pro. Maybe that’s why he lives in Oklahoma, is game for far-flung adventures and is geeked by the mystery of it all

- Dylan Dethier

LITTLE BY LITTLE, Viktor Hovland is running into the realities of adulthood.

“The times that I go home, it’s nice to see everyone, but it kind of gets boring as well because I don’t necessarily have a life there anymore,” he says with a sigh.

He’s talking about Oslo, Norway. We’re sitting in Stillwater, Okla., in the locker room at Karsten Creek GC. Hovland lived in Oslo until his matriculation, then, starting in 2016, at Oklahoma State, where he played three years for the Cowboys. He has just shown me around the place, which is a shrine to the OSU golf program, the walls filled with photos and trophies from decades of collegiate dominance. The 2018 season is prominently featured, and with good reason: Karsten hosted the NCAA Championships that year and OSU took home the title, sweeping Alabama 5–0 in the final. Later that summer, Hovland won the U.S. Amateur. He turned pro the following year and never looked back, earning his PGA Tour card and rocketing into pro golf’s top tier.

Now, four years later, Hovland—25 years old and ranked No. 6 in the world—still hasn’t moved from his college town. That’s a stark contrast to his Tour peers (there are five 26-year-olds in the top 20, all of them married), and there’s a refreshing freeness to the hours Hovland can spend listening to podcasts and playing online poker. But he’s hardly the Van Wilder of Oklahoma State. He’s stayed in Stillwater for the stability.

“When you turn pro and start traveling, you don’t see a lot of the same people you used to,” he says. “You’re used to your college teammates and the college coaches, and now everything’s kind of on your own.”