Martin Dempster: Weekend winners but Viktor Hovland and Patrick Reed don’t share golf’s love

Two press conferences this year stuck in my mind and, lo and behold, they involved the biggest weekend winners in the game, Norwegian Viktor Hovland and American Patrick Reed.

Patrick Reed with the Gene Sarazen Cup after winning the WGC Mexico Championship. Picture: Hector Vivas/Getty

As 22 year-old Hovland made history on Sunday by becoming the first Norwegian to win on the PGA Tour with his victory in the Puerto Rico Open, Reed was on his way to claiming a second World Golf Championship in Mexico.

Both were outstanding successes but, boy, have they been greeted in different ways in the golfing world. Hovland has been hailed whereas Reed, quite frankly, has been roasted. There’s never a dull week in golf, or so it seems.

Most people might want to talk about Reed, who has become the game’s most controversial figure by a mile – well, maybe not quite with Bryson DeChambeau around – but I’m going to start with Hovland in reflecting on those aforementioned press 
conferences.

Viktor Hovland won the Puerto Rico Open. Picture: Kevin C. Cox/Getty

Not in a long time have I seen anyone come into a room and light up the place with such a warm smile and engaging personality than the young man from Oslo did ahead of his debut appearance in the Omega Dubai Desert Classic on the European Tour in January.

He’d had a tough time of it the previous week in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, having been one of the first players to be handed a “bad time” under the circuit’s new pace of play policy and also picking up a one-shot penalty for wrongly moving a sponsor’s board by mistake.

The latter contributed to him missing the cut by a shot in the Rolex Series event, but there was no hint of him feeling either aggrieved or sorry for himself as he reflected on both that unfortunate incident and the “bad time”.

“It was a bit of a rookie move from my perspective,” he said of apparently taking way too long faffing over the line on his ball before even getting round to standing over a putt.

I liked everything about the way Hovland handled himself in that interview room at Emirates Golf Club. He’s very much like Bob MacIntyre, in fact. Both are very talented and both have that great quality of being able to take big new challenges in their stride.

“It is a little weird,” admitted Hovland of the attention he’d been receiving even before becoming a history-maker on the PGA Tour. “But I guess it’s just how it is, and it’s a good thing; I’m not complaining about it. I’m trying not to think about it too much. I’m just trying to get better and hopefully I can win some tournaments.”

At the time, he didn’t hold a card for either the PGA Tour or European Tour and was having to rely on invitations. “The schedule is very fluid for me at this point,” he said in ending that press conference. It still is in some respects, but he now has an exemption for the US circuit and he’ll get into any European Tour event he wants to play in.

Hovland was already on Padraig Harrington’s Ryder Cup radar, having been picked out as one of the players ticking lots of boxes in terms of statistics, and he has certainly given himself a real platform now to be in that European team at Whistling Straits in 
September.

Reed, a certainty to be in the United States ranks in Wisconsin, recorded his latest win, a second WGC and eighth on the PGA Tour, at the end of a week when he’d been accused by compatriot Brooks Koepka of “building sandcastles” during the rules incident in the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas in December that continues to haunt him.

Which brings me round to that other press conference, this one was at the Saudi International the week after the Dubai event, sticking in my mind because,as I was thinking about it on Sunday, I was right to use the words “thick skin” when I asked Reed about whether or not he’d been affected by what now seems to be a widely regarded opinion of him effectively being a “cheat”.

“I can’t control what people say, what people write or anything like that,” he replied. “All I can control is what I do, and if I’m happy, I feel like I’m living the right way. You can’t please everyone, and if you allow naysayers or people to write things that are negative to affect you, then it’s going to affect your ultimate goal and that’s to play the best golf we can.

“There’s always people that cross the lines. That happens. But those are the things where you just have to keep your head down, keep plugging and continue playing the best golf you can.”

Like him or not, Reed is pretty darn good at what he calls “blocking out the noise”.