THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 11, 2021

Viktor Hovland

TPC Sawgrass

Quick Quotes

Q. Assess your round today.

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, obviously didn't get off to the best start on No. 11 there. I'm sure we'll get into that, but yeah, making a double bogey there was very sloppy. But managed to bounce back well after that and just kind of stick to my game plan and, yeah, did a good job for the rest of the day.

Q. Can you just kind of rehash that? Just I read that PGA TOUR Live maybe helped you out with it and the volunteer had the wrong -- can you explain that?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, I don't know a hundred percent what happened, but I was in the left side of the fairway and hit a poor second shot that I saw landed in the grass and kicked right, went in the water. And I honestly didn't think too much about it because in my head I'm like, okay, that landed, because me and Shay we were thinking, okay, that looks like it's going to go in the bunker, barely misses the bunker, kicks right, goes in the water. So like in my head I'm not thinking, oh, did that cross or not.

When we get up, obviously it's a small area and I just wanted to make sure that that drop was fine with the guys. And none of them really saw it. So we decided to bring in the rules official and I don't know what kind of video footage they were looking at but maybe the camera tower behind the green and he was saying from his angle it looked like it hit the kind of the wood, which was in the hazard, so it meaning it didn't cross, but I was a hundred percent confident it did not hit the wood, but as it turns out, in that situation you have to be a hundred percent certain, and when he said that that video footage was not a hundred percent decisive, then I didn't really have much more of a say, but then luckily someone yeah with PGA TOUR Live, or I don't know who it was, said they had evidence that it hit on the grass and then bounced in and crossed the hazard. So yeah.

Q. You were on your way back to take a drop on the other side, is that correct?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: I was, yeah, because the rules official that was there, you know, he had heard on the radio that it looked like it hit the wood and it didn't cross so therefore even though I was pretty confident with what I saw it still, you know that kind of makes the -- it kind of muddies the situation a little bit, so it's not a clean-cut and dry, so in that case I would have to assume that it didn't cross, but luckily we then saw the later footage.

Q. Did that affect you at all for your fourth shot?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Well it didn't really help me out because I ended up hitting it over the green. Terrible. But right there and then, you're probably saves me half a shot in the long run. So it was a pretty big deal, going from hitting a full wedge or full iron shot into that back pin and if I was able to drop there, which I was, I could just kind of roll something up there. So it was a much easier shot, yeah.

Q. Should the player's word not maybe supersede some inconclusive video in a situation like that?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: That's dicey to for me to say. I can only speak for myself, I was pretty confident that it crossed the line, especially from that angle that I was in on the left side of the fairway and I saw it bounce pretty straight to the right. But it's just such a hard issue because I mean most of the time you can't get a hundred percent bet on with the camera angle and it's just really hard to know. You just got to have to take it on each basis.

Q. Getting it back to where you did after that start, it has to be satisfying where you are?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, that was good. I have been hitting it pretty solid the last few months and just one shot that I've kind of been struggling with that longer club off the going into par-5s, it's just like that thin little heel shot, and of course it happened there at the wrong time and it's very easy to kind of lose your confidence off of that but I managed to just kind of tell myself that I have been playing very good and just see the shots that I want to see and I managed to reset pretty quickly.

Q. Weekend at Bay Hill, how quickly do you shake that off or what did you take from that experience?

VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, it's like you got to have to kind of take yourself a little bit away from the score because it was very, very difficult the last couple days. Third round it was manageable, Sunday was very difficult and especially at that place when there's so much water and the fairways are so narrow, you can't take on the water so you end up hitting good shots in the rough or bunkers, just trying to say, okay, how can I make a par on this hole. So I just kind of looked at the certain shots that I hit and they weren't as bad as they would have been if I was just hitting it on the range, so it's just, you can't beat yourself up too poorly.