Trend Tracker: Going Deep on Hovland's Gear from Valspar

This past week the PGA TOUR was in Palm Harbor, Florida for the Valspar Championship at Innisbrook Resort—and after a wild final round that saw multiple lead changes, it was Viktor Hovland who came out on top after Justin Thomas failed to par the last hole. Thanks to that setback, it only took a tap-in bogey on the 72nd hole for Viktor to claim his 7th career PGA TOUR title.

With this being Viktor's first win since the 2023 Tour Championship, Trend Tracker is doing things a little differently and going deep into the clubs and footwear of the PGA TOUR's latest winner.

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Viktor Loves the Classics

Viktor Hovland tends to be a bit of an outlier and considering he came into the week missing three straight cuts, it would be easy to see why he might not have been top of mind for a lot of people to win at Innisbrook on the Copperhead course. He even said in his post-win press conference coming into the week he wasn't sure if he was going to play the Valspar but luckily he did and he came away with the victory.

(Said laughing). Yeah, I entered last, yeah, the last week, and wasn't really sure if I was going to play or not until I got here Tuesday afternoon and played a late nine holes. I played nine holes in the pro-am the next morning and we were here ready to go. But, yeah, wasn't sure I was going to show up, but I'm glad I did.

Now, when it comes to Viktor's equipment he takes a very different approach to his gear than he does with his coaches (don't worry, that's not intended to be a drive-by on any of the coaches he's worked with in the past 18 months). Viktor tends to look for solutions to bad play in his swing rather than his clubs and holds on to a lot of his gear for a long time—this is certainly relevant when it comes to talking about his driver as well as his three wood, which we'll get to in just a moment.

So about that driver, Viktor is one of the last few remaining players on the PGA TOUR using a Ping G425 series driver—he uses the LST model. Since its release, Ping has gone on to release the extremely popular G430 line and more recently the G440 line, which has already seen a lot of success around the world of professional golf.

Viktor also uses Ping's i210 irons, which have been in his bag for quite some time, but it's also understandably pretty hard to change when you consider the year had in 2023 when he won the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup with them in his bag.

Something About That SIM

We need to have a little chat about Viktor's 3-wood, a Gen1 TaylorMade SIM Ti. As a gear nerd and a lover of fairway woods, the Gen1 SIM was one of the fastest and lowest spin fairway woods on the market at the time of its release in 2020. As the name suggests, it was released at the same time as the original SIM driver, and at the risk of driving up the used market - continues to be what I would like to call a bit of a cult classic.

(Yes, this is from my personal stash and NO, It's not for sale!)

Speaking of the driver, its shallower profile and extremely low spin design made it a favorite among better players - especially those who liked to play a low spin cut off the tee. When you bring all of this stuff together from a fitting perspective, it's easy to understand why Collin Morikawa kept that driver in the bag for so long.

As for Collin, even though he has moved on from the Gen1 SIM driver he too, continues to play the Gen1 SIM 3-wood, which tells me more than I need to know about how its performance continues to stand up.

A Few More Words on the Gen1 SIM

Although drivers get most of the attention when it comes to metal wood releases, the Gen1 SIM Ti generated a lot of buzz thanks to its ball speed consistency and low spin performance - especially considering the slightly-above-average size profile (in an era before Mini drivers were more of a thing). This performance was possible because of the club's titanium body, carbon crown, and a very large (and heavy) tungsten sole plate.

With that in mind, if you look across the spectrum of fairway woods available now, you will notice very similar design cues to those of the Gen1 SIM from several manufacturers including Ping with their G440 LST, Callaway’s Elyte Titanium, Cobra’s DS Adapt LS, Mizuno’s ST-G, and Tour Edge with their Exotics C725. I’m not saying that there weren't titanium fairway woods before the Gen1 Sim, but that club created a line of demarcation between new and “old” titanium fairway woods and golfers have 100% benefitted from that design and technology step.

One More (non-club) Hovland Gear Nuggie

A slightly less obvious change Mr. Hovland made a couple of weeks ago at the Arnold Palmer Invitation has to do with his footwear by going to his previous Nikes over his current Pumas. The change had less to do with comfort and everything to do with reading greens according to what he said to Eurosport's Espen Baker leading up to the event.

“I’ve gone back to some old Nikes. I feel I can read the slopes of the greens better with my feet. They are so light, and actually a bit unstable, compared to the Puma shoes I’ve been using for a while now. These are the (shoes) I’ve played with for much of my career, so I’m very familiar with them. I feel like I read the greens much better, which makes me much more comfortable with the ball.”

In the world of gear, to see a player go back to a pair of shoes because of their putting is rather unusual. I’m not saying it hasn't happened before because I’m not that well-versed on the subject, but I can’t recall a time that it was the main reason. As for the stats they don’t lie because Viktor finished 2nd in strokes gained putting this week averaging +1.838 strokes gained per round vs. his season average of -0.158.

I don't know what this means for his relationship with Puma going forward but it's something to keep an eye on.

Hovland's Full Bag of Gear:

Driver: Ping G425 LST 3-Wood: TaylorMade Gen1 SIM Ti 3-Iron: Titleist U505 Irons (4-PW): Ping i210 Wedge: Ping S159 (52/65); Ping Glide 2.0 (60) Putter: Ping Custom PLD DS72 Ball: Titleist ProV1