THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY WORKDAY

June 7, 2024

Viktor Hovland

Muirfield Village

Quick Quotes

Q. How would you assess the day?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, the greens were firmer today, so that already makes the greens play a little bit smaller, and then obviously some nice gusts there, and some steady winds makes it even more difficult. So did a good job of just hitting a bunch of fairways, but even then, there's a lot of thinking and guessing going into the greens. It's just hard to get it close to the hole, but I managed to do that today somehow.

Q. Did it feel more difficult than yesterday? The scores would indicate that but just from your advantage point.

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yes, a hundred percent. I don't know, so far with different pins, I thought there were some tricky pins yesterday, but there were some good ones today as well. I'm just happy to play better today. Hit it a lot nicer. I missed a few short ones, but still, yeah, just played great.

Q. Did you go work on anything last night that you felt like maybe worked better with your swing today?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, I just got on a FaceTime with Joe and we just talked through some feels and simple cues that I saw some immediate kind of improvement, so it was nice to take those feels out to the course today.

Q. You talked about this, but the fact that now it seems like you can take those feels from Thursday night into Friday a lot easier maybe than you did earlier in the year, is that kind of correct?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, I mean, it's key just finding a playable feel, something that's going to be different and actually make you hit it better, but it's still got to be simple enough for you to do under the gun because it's -- you don't have a lot of time to tinker out there. It's just when the course is so hard, you got to know where the ball's going.

Q. If you could draw a visual with your finger, which would be great for TV, by the way, of your confidence level last year when you won to where you are now, what would it look like? You don't have to use your finger.

VIKTOR HOVLAND: That's a good question. No, that's fair. I would say because I came off playing really nicely at the PGA last year and I was doing a lot of really good things, I was probably here (Indicating) and then after the FedExCup, it was here (Indicating). Now I'm at least getting closer to where I was at this tournament last year. So not quite there yet, I feel like, but can't argue against results. I'm playing some nice golf, so just got to keep it going.

Q. How much would you have to bend over to show a low point?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: (Laughing). Yeah, let's not go into that. (Laughing).

Q. Lastly, as it relates to how you feel about your game and confidence and everything else, how much do you get from result, how much do you get from feel when you're just hitting the ball?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, I'm probably more skewed to the subjective feel of things. I can disregard the results a little bit if I'm doing the things that I can control really, really well, because some things, especially at this place, it's so hard, I mean, you can hit good shots and end up in some bad spots, and you can hit bad shots that end up in some decent spots.

So it's just like during three, four rounds of golf, that's not a big enough sample size to really show that, okay, yeah, you're playing great. For me personally, if I can start the ball left and it cuts and I can hit it as hard as I want and not worry about the ball going left, that to me in itself, that means that I'm playing some good golf, and I can go out there and shoot a good score. Whether I shoot 65, 60 or 74, that's -- you don't really know, that's --

Q. Other factors?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah.

Q. I didn't see you on 5 today. What did you do on 5, the par-5?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: On 5? I hit it in the fairway, had a little bit of a mud ball and was in between clubs, so I just kind of hit a 3-iron and kind of bailed it out to the right, hit a nice pitch to 7 feet and just over-read the putt a little bit.

Q. You get the feeling that that spot in the fairway would have mud on it if the sun shined for 10 days in a row. Do you get that sense, and is there a way around it?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Around what?

Q. Not having a clean ball. Making sure you have a clean ball.

VIKTOR HOVLAND: I mean, I did think about it, like, the higher you hit it and the more you spin it off the tee it's going to just like plug when it hits the fairway. But if you get a low chasing one off the tee, it's going to probably get some mud when it lands on the fairway, but then it's going to roll and probably get rid of most of the mud. So there's a few of the shots out there where I kind of hit a knuckle ball off the tee and it pitches in a spot where you get some roll and I had no mud on it. But as soon as I kind of hit a little spinny or a little high drive, it's going to have some mud on it.