Weekly Recap: Viktor the Victor

With the short El Camaleon Golf Club course ripe for the taking even in dry conditions, the Mayakoba Golf Classic became an absolute shootout after rain delayed play on Sunday morning and softened the already-receptive greens.

For as good of a player as Viktor Hovland has become in such a short period of time, these were not optimal conditions for him. He's a world-class iron player and a suspect putter.

However, Hovland fended off an onslaught of golfers going low, sinking his seventh birdie of the day from 12 feet away on the 72nd hole to register his second career PGA Tour victory. What a way to finish the year on the PGA Tour, which will resume in January with the Sentry Tournament of Champions.

When Hovland won for the first time earlier this year at the Puerto Rico Open, he drained a 30-footer for birdie on the final hole to win.

The 23-year-old native of Norway ranked 115th in Strokes Gained: Putting last season and 141st in the early going in 2020-21. Yet he ranked T10 in putting average at Mayakoba, racking up 25 birdies, which was just enough to defeat the hard-charging Aaron Wise by a single stroke. Hovland went 63-65 on the weekend to reach 20-under-par.

It surely bodes well that a player who normally doesn't putt very well can find something in critical moments. "I was shaking there at the end," Hovland told reporters in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Hovland ranked first in the field in greens in regulation, and that's what he does best. So if he can continue to improve his short game -- really, his wedge play is the weakest part of his game -- he will start contending in the biggest tournaments, not just the lesser-heralded Tour stops.

It may sound impossible for a player now ranked 15th in the world -- one spot behind former Oklahoma State teammate Matthew Wolff -- but Hovland had only one top-10 in all of 2020 outside of his two wins. Yet he accumulated 13 top-25s throughout the year. That's a lot of very good but not elite.

Not only did Hovland deliver with his putter, he did it with a wedge, too. After a wayward approach on 16 left him in a sandy waste area some 40 yards from the hole, he got up to about six feet and made the putt to save par. He ranked 168th in SG: Around-the-Green last season but is 47th so far in the current campaign.

While Hovland held the lead most of the way on the back nine, at one point there were 11 other golfers within two shots, including Wise, who matched Harris English's low round of the day with an 8-under 63. Three more guys shot 7-under; five others, including Hovland, shot 6-under; and there were nine golfers at 5-under on the day. So if you weren't going low, you were getting run over.

Hovland had already qualified for the Tournament of Champions thanks to his win in Puerto Rico, and for next April's Masters by reaching the TOUR Championship, so the $1.3 million he took him home was surely his most notable accomplishment of the day.

One other thing he did accomplish, though, was breaking the so-called Curse of the Puerto Rico Open. No winner of that alternate-field tournament, which began in 2008, has ever won another PGA Tour event. Unfortunately, Tony Finau knows this all too well.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Justin Thomas
They say it's hard to follow up a great round with another one (although Hovland did). But that doesn't make it any less surprising that Thomas could not make a run on Sunday after an 9-under 62 on Saturday moved him within three shots of the 54-hole lead. He shot one of the poorest rounds among the leaders, 1-under, and wound up tied for 12th. Still, it'll go down as another good week in a year of many great weeks for Thomas, who should continue to be a top-5 golfer in 2021.

Rickie Fowler
On the other hand, the future is a great unknown for one of Thomas' former vacation buddies. Fowler missed the cut at Mayakoba and tumbled out of the top-50 in the world rankings for the first time in almost seven years. That means he is not exempt into the Masters next April, though of course he could qualify by winning a full-points event or climbing back into the top-50 two weeks before Augusta. But with an on-going swing change continuing to be a work-in-progress, that is no sure thing. The next time we see Fowler – presumably sometime in January – he will have gone 12 months without so much as a top-10.

Aaron Wise
Wise is a former Tour winner and one-time top-50 player who really had fallen. He made only six of 18 cuts last season. His only finishes even inside the top-30 were in opposite-field events (both top-10s). Already in the new season, however, Wise had had two top-25s and just missed a third before finishing second at Mayakoba. He jumped more than 100 spots in the world rankings to 127th. He's improved in every strokes-gained category over last season but especially Approach and Around-the-Green. He probably doesn't want to stop playing right now for the winter break. But Wise could be a 2021 sleeper, especially when he's priced under $7,000. Remember, Wise is still only 24.

Adam Long
Long had nine top-25s last season. He already has four in seven starts this season, including a tie for third at Mayakoba. He was $7,800 in this field, in part because it wasn't a strong field and also because he was runner-up last year. But many weeks he is priced far less. Long is back up to No. 62 in the world, just off his personal best.

Tom Hoge
If you can remember all the way back to early this year, Hoge was one of the big surprises, rolling into the new year with T12-T6-5-T25 in the first five weeks. The stoppage in the spring stopped Hoge in his tracks, as he couldn't crack the top-20 in 18 starts after play resumed, missing eight cuts. Until Mayakoba. Hoge tied for third with Long to move to a career-best 107th OWGR. He began the year at No. 240.

Tony Finau
If you would've said that Finau would finish second in the field in putting average, we would've said, "How many strokes did he win the tournament by?" Yet incredibly, the normally superb part of Finau's game failed, as he ranked only T37 in greens in regulation and made two critical errors off the tee late on the back nine on Sunday. On Nos. 16 and 17 he hit wayward drives, resulting in penalty shots and back-to-back bogeys. A final meaningless birdie moved him to a tie for eighth. So now the Curse of the Puerto Rico Open has been broken, but not by Finau. When will he win another tournament?
 
Emiliano Grillo
Like Finau, Grillo is a tremendous ball striker and horrible putter. So what does he do? He puts on a putting clinic (for him) for three days and carries a two-stroke lead into Sunday. But Grillo turned in the poorest round of anyone on the top half of the leaderboard, 1-over, and also tied for eighth – also thanks to a T37 ranking in greens in regulation. If he can't win in a relatively weak field while putting out of his mind, well, there won't be many better chances for Grillo.

Max Homa
Like Hoge, Homa is a guy who had a good thing going before the stoppage – T9-T6-T14-T5 in an early 2020 four-week span - then couldn't get much going after golf resumed. He had missed 9 of 15 cuts until tying for 12th at Mayakoba. He had fallen out of the top-100 but now is back to 98th. Unlike Hoge, Homa is a Tour winner, having taken the 2019 Wells Fargo. But with so many long stretches without high finishes, he's a hard guy to back going forward.

Andy Ogletree
The Georgia Tech star's pro career got off to splendid start at 69-67 to make it to the weekend. Ogletree couldn't sustain it, closing 70-73 to tie for 46th. Still, an admirable showing, especially coming off a tie for 34 at the Masters to win low amateur. Ogletree has no status at this time, but he should get some sponsor invites and he's someone to keep an eye on. As we've seen often the past few years, guys coming out of college are more prepared to immediately compete on Tour than ever before. For the record, Ogletree moved from 960th OWGR after the Masters to 815th now.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout
The young South African who has been making a name for himself on the PGA Tour – he tied for 38th at the Masters – returned home and to win back-to-back European tour events there, including the South Africa Open on Sunday. Bezuidenhout has soared to a career-best 35th in the world rankings, which means he'll be back at Augusta in April. He'll also be in Dubai this week for the Euro Tour's season-ending DP World Tour Championship with an elite field of 65.