July 17, 2025
County Antrim, Northern Ireland, UK
Mixed Zone
Q. Walk us through the round; first, great opening eagle.
VIKTOR HOVLAND: It was a nice start, 2-under through two with a nice eagle there. Yeah, just didn't feel super comfortable off the tee. Driver's a little bit loose, kind of leaked it a little bit to the right, and I had back-to-back three-putts there on 5 and 6. That kind of ruined a little bit of the round.
Still battled in there, and hopefully a nice round tomorrow and we can be right back in it.
Q. Stats say that you actually gained off the tee and around the greens, but on approach play, which is usually one of your strengths, something happened there. What happened on the approaches?
VIKTOR HOVLAND: All the pins are in pretty tricky spots, and I did hit some bad iron shots, but there's a lot of good iron shots that I hit on, for example, on 14 and 15 that were pretty solid, but they run off. If you're just missing by a couple steps, they roll off, and now you're 20 metres away, and you've got to hit up a slope. So that makes it look worse than it was.
I actually felt like, yeah, the driver got me into some bad spots off the tee, especially on 7 missing it right, No. 10 miss it right, and then I would get bad lies on top of that. That's going to look bad on approaches. But I need to hit my driver and irons better for me to do better tomorrow.
Q. How important is acceptance, if I may? Jon Rahm was mentioning that. There's going to be some tough shots out there, pins are tough, wind, all that. For you, how do you do acceptance?
VIKTOR HOVLAND: I knew that was going to happen. I just wish I was a little bit better equipped to handle it. It's just I'm standing out over the ball and not quite sure what's going to happen, which shot is coming. So I'm just kind of aiming it in the general area and hoping to hit it really and just playing with the wind and trying to play the percentages instead of when I feel more comfortable in my game, I can kind of be a bit more precise.
Yeah, you're just trying to play it as safe as possible, but even with these tricky pin locations and these conditions, it's hard to miss it in the right spots. Sometimes the wind is just going to blow it offline.
Q. You say you don't know what kind of shot is coming. What is it like to process emotionally for you?
VIKTOR HOVLAND: Yeah, it's been tough. That's kind of what I've been dealing with the past couple years. I guess I'm getting a little bit more used to it.
I have been hitting it better than I have been earlier in the year, so that's nice to see. There's still some misses in there that shouldn't happen, and that creates a little bit of insecurity when you step on the next tee. When you try to hit a shot that starts to the left and it starts to the right instead, yeah, it's a little frustrating.
Q. Can Shay help you with any of those nuances?
VIKTOR HOVLAND: No, that's all my swinging and how I play the game right now. There's not much I can say. He has to just keep giving me the right yardages and just talk over the game plan before every shot. But I'm the one that's executing it.
Q. How do you process it in your head? Do you think it through? How do you try to combat those thoughts and feelings?
VIKTOR HOVLAND: Just acknowledge them. It's there, and then you just try to make the best out of it. You don't try to fix it right then and there. You just know that, okay, doesn't feel quite right. Is there a shot that I can get away with that's going to be functional?
Especially out here when it's a little bit of wind, and links golf the ball bounces. You've just got to do something that lands in a certain area, and hopefully it ends up close.
Q. Long round today. How does that affect the play?
VIKTOR HOVLAND: It was really slow, I think almost six hours, just under six hours. That's brutal, especially when you have to focus for so long. It's not easy. Wind picked up there in the afternoon. Yeah, it takes a lot out of you.
Q. How do you feel you do in between shots overall, you and your caddie? You know what I mean? Like it happens where there's breaks and stuff.
VIKTOR HOVLAND: Because I'm not as comfortable as I feel like I should be, I think a little too much about the next shot in between the shots. That obviously takes a little bit more energy out of you. I'd like to be able to relax a little bit more, but that's kind of the nature of the beast when you're playing a major championship and you've got tough conditions. It's hard to just completely take your mind off of it.
Q. Can I ask your thoughts on the 1st hole, the out of bounds, out of bounds both sides. I want to know what you make of that being an opening hole in a major?
VIKTOR HOVLAND: You've got to hit a pretty bad shot to hit it OB left to right, but sure, it adds a little bit extra to it. I think it's a cool hole.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports


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