NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Viktor Hovland, one of the game’s youngest chronic tinkerers, is off to a positive start to 2026 with solid finishes in Dubai and Phoenix. His season comes with a new putter grip and experimentation with a new and shorter driver in the bag.
Hovland finished T10 at the WM Phoenix Open with a strong performance on the TPC Scottsdale greens, finishing the week ranked 16th in the field in strokes gained putting, picking up 3.67 strokes over the field.
After leading the field in putting during a third-round 65, he said it was a grip change that had helped him find more stability with his stroke.
“Yeah, definitely made a lot of putts today,” he said. “Made a grip change on my putter. Not how I hold it, but the actual grip itself. I feel way more stability over the ball and my speed control has been really good this week. So, yes, it’s awesome. I need to putt well with the way I’m hitting it off the tee. It’s nice.”
Hovland switched from a Golf Pride grip on his Ping PLD DS 72 Prototype putter to a SuperStroke Zenergy Tour grip.
“Yeah, my putting has been very up and down, very so-so, but I do feel like with the new grip change that will give me a bit more stability,” he said. “So if I can continue to chip and putt well, my iron game is still good considering how poorly it feels to hit a golf ball, but the driver has really got to be figured out. I got to put the ball in play.”
Hovland’s driver is a work in progress. In Phoenix he was testing his Ping G425 driver, which was apparently underspinning and leaking to the right, against a new Ping G440 K driver, which Hovland had reportedly called “the best 440 product right out of the box I ever hit” when he first tried it back in October.
“I tried out the new 440 last year because it is faster,” Hovland said. “The spin consistency off the face is a joke. If I hit it off the heel or the toe with a 425 the spin discrepancy is very large … versus the 440.
“However, the problem is it launches a little bit higher for me. And for some reason just with the setup that I’ve tested with, it tends to go a bit more to the right. Right now, with my golf swing when I get stuck, my miss is already a high right miss. If I hit this driver it’s just getting extenuated.”
Hovland tested both clubs in Phoenix with a shorter 45-inch shaft to try to lower the launch and stave off the right miss using 5 grams of hot melt to the heel side of the head. After two days he decided to put the G440 K in play after seeing similar ball speeds to his longer length G425.
“That’s really what sold him on it was that he didn’t have to give up any ball speed, and then he gained the forgiveness of the K driver, with the consistency of the spin rates and everything,” Ping tour rep Kenton Oates told GolfWRX.
“Because I was still hitting it so poorly on the course, I texted Kenton if he could just bring a driver that's a quarter of an inch shorter and so he brought a different shaft as well. It’s in that new 440 K version,” Hovland said. “Just trying to find something I can put in play, and that seemed to be a lot better. That was just last night, so the experimentation continues.”
The Ping G440 K picked up more momentum with Ben Griffin also putting it into play over his G430 Max 10K.
Tony Finau made a switch from his wide-body blade Ping PLD Anser 2D to a new Ping Ally Blue Onset mallet at Torrey Pines and saw immediate returns in a T11 finish. Finau ranked 47th in the field in strokes gained putting at the Farmers Insurance Open compared to the 124th he ranked on tour in 2025.
The mallet proved to be a natural fit for his stroke, allowing him to deliver the face to the ball with more consistency, Golf Digest’s Jonathan Wall reported on social media, adding that the contrast of the new design, featuring a white head against a black sight line, made it easier to square up to the hole and bolstered his confidence in his aim.
Scott Michaux