SLYNC.IO DUBAI DESERT CLASSIC

January 26, 2022

Viktor Hovland

Emirates Golf Club

Press Conference

TOM CARLISLE: Thank you for joining us at the Slync.io. Dubai Desert Classic. Your second time in this event. Give us your thoughts ahead of the week, please.

VIKTOR HOVLAND: It's hard to believe it's been two years already since I was last year but they have made some changes, and it looks great. Weather looks to be good and just kind of looking forward to get started for another great event.

Q. In your first starts, you've had two wins and a T4 last week at Abu Dhabi. What shape is your game in and how confident are you feeling in your recent form?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, I took a little break over the winter, and felt a little rusty in Hawai'i but last week I started playing well again and I feel like my game is trending in the right direction. Hopefully I can kind of build on a lot of stuff that I did well last week and just kind of clean up a couple things here and there.

Q. How important is it for you to start the year strongly, or are you just happy to let the process happen?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of good tournaments this year, and obviously you want to play the best you can every single week. But the majors are coming up later in the year, so it's not like your game has to be the best it's ever been right now. But certainly I want to play the best I can and I feel like I'm certainly in a good spot. So if I can kind of just build on that throughout the year, it's going to be a fun year.

Q. Obviously the Sentry, these are huge events, and you can win back-to-back Rolex Series Events, and you've done so well in all of those, but why do you think you can raise your game so much against these great fields, and how much would it mean to go up against a great field this week and actually win a Rolex Series Event?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, that would be amazing. I don't know, you just kind of -- there's something about the event. When you get here it feels a little different. The atmosphere is a little different. So there's an extra incentive to be on top of your game and last week was a great field. It was a great event. There was another one here this week, so you're kind of -- at least now you're kind of in the same rhythm.

Yeah, I don't know, you want to perform the best you can every single week. You don't want to get beaten too badly when you're playing against the best people in the world.