Viktor Hovland will not play again in 2024 as the world No. 8-ranked golfer recovers from an undisclosed injury, according to Bunkered.co.uk.
Hovland, 27, withdrew from the BMW PGA Championship last month and will not play in the final stretch of events on the DP World Tour. Despite Hovland having played in only two DP World Tour events, bunkered also reported that a spokesman confirmed that Hovland will remain eligible for next year’s Ryder Cup due to the medical reasons preventing him from satisfying the four-event requirement.
Still, the undisclosed injury would mark the end of a very disappointing year on the course for Hovland, who entered 2024 ranked fourth in the world after capturing the FedEx Cup championship and closing out 2023 with five consecutive top-10 finishes worldwide.
He then decided to tinker with his swing, and the result was highly inconsistent performances throughout the first half of the year. After a T22 at The Sentry to open the season in January, Hovland posted only one top-20 finish in his next six starts, including a missed cut at the Masters. Along the way, he withdrew from multiple events, citing the desire to work on his swing at home rather than struggle on the course in competition.
The Norwegian was in competition late on Sunday at the PGA Championship until settling for third. After that came more inconsistent results, with a T15 at the Memorial his best finish over a six-event streak that included missing the weekend at the U.S. Open.
Hovland did kick off his FedEx Cup defense with a T2 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
“It feels like it’s been a lot of peaks and valleys. I mean, it’s just not that fun to play golf when you don’t know where the ball is going,” Hovland said before the BMW.
“I do pride myself in trying to make the best out of it, but it gets to a point where you kind of lose that belief — you just see a shot, and that’s not good enough. I can try to grind my hardest. I can try to chip in from there. But you do that too often, too many times during the course of a round or a tournament, it’s too much to overcome.
“And I feel like it’s a waste of time for me to be playing golf if that’s where I’m at. I’d rather be off the golf course and work on it, trying to figure out why I’m doing those things.”
Hovland went on to finish T26 at the BMW and T12 at the Tour Championship, which is shaping up to be Hovland’s final competitive round of 2024.
–Field Level Media