Viktor Hovland has a new golf coach working with him at the Masters, and it's the same as the old golf coach. Hovland is once again working with coach Dana Dahlquist, while he is no longer working with Grant Waite.
"The cool thing is that he knows my swing quite well from 2020 and the period we worked together," Hovland told Discovery.
Hovland has sought to make changes in his game this season after his most successful year on the PGA Tour, feeling that he needed to make improvements in his tee-to-green game after putting in significant work to improve his short game. The Norwegian said he found that his long game was the best in his professional career when working with Dahlquist.
"I also liked what he thought was the best strategy to get back to a lot of that movement from that time. I thought it made a lot of sense, and so we've been working together a bit now," Hovland said.
Dahlquist is Hovland's third coach in recent memory, with Hovland moving on from Joe Mayo to Grant Waite and now back to Dahlquist. Hovland is hopeful that he can get back quickly to what made him so successful last year.
"I'm still kind of looking for some opinions out there, but I feel like I'm on a good track right now and we'll see where that takes us," Hovland explained. "Like, I was playing great golf last year, but it's not like I'm trying to change my golf swing. It's just sometimes the game of golf you try to do the same every day, but then things aren't the same every day when you go to the golf course.
"I took a huge break after last year and when I came back, things were a little bit different and I had to kind of find my way back to where I think I'm going to play my best golf. And even at the end of the last year I still felt like, yeah, I was playing great, but I got a lot out of my game and it didn't necessarily feel sustainable, but it's not like I consciously went in and said, hey, we're going to change everything up."
Though Hovland feels like he hasn't totally figured out the feeling he's looking for again, that doesn't mean he doesn't think he has a chance this week at Augusta National.
"Now I've still played some really, really good golf having to think about some stuff, so it's not like I'm ruling myself out of a tournament," he said. "I'm just aware that, hey, we have some additional challenges that I haven't had in awhile, but that's how it goes."
