With 'a Nice Little 28' on Sunday's Back Nine, Viktor Hovland Steals the BMW Championship
OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. — With the scorecard in his hand, Rory McIlroy looked at the numbers and noticed a lot of "3s." Eight of them to be exact on the back nine of Olympia Fields Country Club for the man whose score he was keeping.
With just a "4" to note on the other hole, there was some pretty easy math.
"A nice little 28 for him," McIlroy said of Viktor Hovland’s closing nine holes on Sunday. “It was great to see."
And for Hovland, it was even better to produce.
The back-nine score coupled with a front-nine 33 added up to a career-best score of 61 and helped him overcome a three-shot deficit to roar past Scottie Scheffler and win the BMW Championship.
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The victory was Hovland’s second of the year on the PGA Tour after another come-from-behind win at the Memorial and pushed him into second place in the FedEx Cup standings behind Scheffler heading to next week’s season-ending event in Atlanta.
"It was awesome," said Hovland, who won for the fifth time on the PGA Tour. “I’ve gotten off to a nice start every single day and I was 3 under through five holes. I felt like I was in a good spot. But bogeying (No.) 7 after kind of a bad break off the tee shot, getting stuck in the lip just over the bunker and made a bogey there. Missed kind of a nice putt for birdie on 8 and had a pitching wedge in on 9 and didn’t get that one close.
“I felt like it was going to be one of those like the other days where I’ve gotten off to a nice start and kind of just played OK and shot 68 or 67 or 66, which is a nice score.
“But after making the turn, I stuffed it on 12, and that’s when I kind of felt like I hit the groove a little bit."
The bogey on the 7th hole turned out to be the only "5" on Hovland’s scorecard.
On the back nine, he birdied seven of the nine holes with putts ranging from 1 foot to 9 feet. For the round, he hit 12 of 14 fairways, 16 of 18 greens and needed just 25 putts.
"He played great," said McIlroy, whose 66 seemed like 100 in comparison. I sort of realized around like 14, 15, something pretty special was happening, and he played a great round of golf. He played incredible."
And he left third-round co-leaders Scheffler and Matt Fitzpatrick to wonder what hit them. Both shot 66 and were beat by two.
"Pretty amazing round of golf to win this tournament like that," said Scheffler, who now has eight top-five finishes since winning the Players Championship in March but has not been able to add a victory.
“I still don’t understand how the scores were so low this week. I don’t know, this place seems pretty hard to me, but the guys are just ripping it up. 61 is a fantastic round, especially with Sunday pressure, and the way he finished was a really fantastic round."
Hovland’s winning score of 263, 17 under par, bested the winning total of Jon Rahm in 2020 at Olympia Fields by 15 shots. Early-week rain coupled with a two-hour rain and weather delay on Thursday softened the course and let to the better scoring. Max Homa, who finished tied for fifth, had a second-round 62, which was the course record for two days.
The tournament turned late in the round when Scheffler missed a six-footer for a birdie at the par-3 16th hole just after Hovland had knocked a 9-iron approach to 9 feet for a birdie at the 17th. They were tied. Then Hovland’s pitching wedge at the 18th set up a 7-foot birdie putt for a one-shot lead that became two when Scheffler bogeyed the 17th hole.
Fitzpatrick turned out to be the only player who moved from outside the top 30 to qualify for the FedEx Cup and will start the Tour Championship in 10th place. Chris Kirk fell out.
Scheffler, by virtue of holding the No. 1 spot, will begin the strokes-staggered Tour Championship with a two-shot advantage over Hovland and a three-shot lead over McIlroy, who is third. Jon Rahm, who began the week No. 1 in points, slipped to fourth.
For Hovland, who is from Norway and played college golf at Oklahoma State, it was the lowest score he’s ever shot, even in casual golf. And he simply said he was not afraid to go low when the opportunity was there.
“When I get into the rhythm, normally I hit a lot of fairways," he said. “I'm a good driver of the ball, so I'm going to have a lot of opportunities from the fairway ... if you put me in the fairway, I’m going to hit it somewhere close to the pin.
“When I do that and I get the putter rolling, I'm trusting my reads, I've got the speed dialed in, and it's just one of those days that just everything seemed to flow and seemed to happen.
“I guess I just didn't try to fight it. I just relied on my instincts and my intuition and worked out this time."