Viktor Hovland shows his emotions during painful finish at PLAYERS

Viktor Hovland will be feeling sick after the way his first-round finished on Thursday at the 2022 Players Championship.

All it took was two holes on his back nine to completely undo what was a promising-looking round for the Norwegian. Hovland was at four under par and near the top of the leaderboard heading into his final stretch of holes before TPC Sawgrass does what it typically does to a professionals’ round, ruin it.

Viktor was coming off of a solid front nine 34 where he was bogey-free on TPC Sawgrass’ challenging back nine holes. The stretch of mistake-free golf continued into his back nine and then on holes 4 and 5 things were really looking up. Hovland who is an elite ball-striker brought that to the party during his opening round when he struck his second shot on the 375 yard, par 4, 4th hole to within five feet. The result was a well-deserved birdie that moved him to three under par for his round.

The World number three was not finished either, he followed up his birdie on the 4th with another on the par-four, 5th hole. Again, he sweetly hit his approach to within ten feet of the flagstick, the ensuing eight-foot birdie putt was converted and Hovland was just a couple shots back of the lead.

Viktor Hovland’s solid bogey-free round would come apart on the very next hole.

This time Viktor headed to another short par 4 hole, the 6th, a hole that plays under 400 yards in length. It’s a hole that should realistically provide scoring opportunities for those in the field this week, but on Thursday was playing slightly over par.

Hovland missed his first fairway on the back nine and things crumbled apart from that point on. The approach found one of the greens small pot-bunkers leaving him with a testy third, for someone who has struggled mightily around the greens the situation was less than ideal. Things did not improve unfortunately in that department for Viktor as he flew the green out of the bunker with his third and was once again left with a tricky up and down, this time for par.

You can probably guess what happened with the fourth, he found the green but left it four feet short of the hole. The visibly disappointed Viktor lost focus on the comebacker and succumbed to a disappointing double bogey. It was only the second double bogey or worse on the 6th hole during day one. The back-to-back birdies that Viktor had gained were gone just as quickly, and then things got even worse.

Two holes later on the finishing par 5, 9th hole, Hovland was again errant with his tee-shot. This time the punishment was a dropped shot as he shanked his drive to the right and straight into the water. There would once again be no recovery as Viktor would again drop a shot. The once-promising round ended with a 71, good for one under par. A solid start, but one that will feel awfully disappointing in the grand scope of things.

Hovland ended his day by walking off the green shaking his head and he will certainly know that he struck the ball well enough Thursday to have been much better off than he is. He gained nearly three strokes with his irons during round one, so the statistics also point to how well he played in that department. That will provide little solace for Viktor though, and he will need to forget how today ended and maintain his focus on the positives as the week goes along.