Viktor Hovland has won multiple times on the PGA Tour and the win at the Hero World Challenge in Albany on Sunday is the latest in the series. But the genial Norwegian stays in awe. Coming from a country with negligible golfing legacy, Viktor drove himself by watching Tiger Woods’ on YouTube, and to play and win a tournament hosted by his idol is surreal.
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Excerpts from an interview:
When was the first time you met Tiger Woods?
Viktor: That was Sage Valley Junior Invitational. Not that I had a conversation with him, but at least I got to just shake his hand on the first tee when we played that junior event there.
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How old were you then?
Viktor: I believe that’s 2014 maybe, 2014. Would have been like 16-ish.
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When you look at your wins, would you say that you’re ahead of schedule in terms of where you maybe thought you might be?
Viktor: Yes, I would say so. You know, still it’s crazy to think that I’m, you know, still just playing the PGA Tour is pretty incredible just from thinking back to where I grew up and playing golf in Norway, you’re playing golf six months out of the year and it’s pretty farfetched to even just play golf professionally coming from Norway. So for me to be here and winning tournaments is pretty unreal.
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You mentioned how unlikely it is for a kid from Norway to play on the PGA Tour. How big of an inspiration or how much did Tiger factor into you being here?
Viktor: Yeah, just kind of, again, I remember sitting in the classroom just watching highlights on YouTube. He definitely inspired me and helped me in that way, but watching his highlights kind of make it seem even more farfetched because you’re going to be competing against this guy when you get on Tour hopefully. It was more like I made it more of a dream.
But I took a lot of inspiration and motivation from Henry Bjornstad, who is our first player on the PGA Tour, and I was lucky enough growing up that after he stopped playing, he did some stuff for our federation. I was about 13 or 14 years old and I got to pick his brain a little bit. That’s not often junior golfers in Norway get to speak with a PGA Tour player, so that made it — that kind of bridged the gap a little bit.
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