Airline snaps Hovland's driver

Not that it's got in the way of his spectacular progress but Viktor Hovland has endured some pretty bad luck with his clubs of late.

At the Mayakoba in November Danny Lee accidentally broke Hovland’s driver while testing it out and he had to borrow a driver that once belonged to fellow Tour player James Hahn. He then went on to win, added another victory at the Hero and is still using it.

He arrived in Hawaii a week early but his clubs weren't as punctual. After flying from Oslo-Paris-Seattle he had to wait for his golf bag which was sent to Salt Lake City and saw him miss his connection.

“It was a big headache,” Hovland said. “It seemed the golf bag was just somehow sitting in Seattle for five days straight. They didn't really know where it was, so I was concerned they lost it initially. And then after a couple of days, they said they physically had it. That got me more frustrated. If you can see the bag, it shouldn't be that hard to put it on the flight.”

So, instead of using the week to get his game back in some sort of shape, he just extended his holiday and did some practice with his caddy's clubs.

“He has Ping clubs, so that was good. But obviously different specs and different clubs so it wasn't ideal but at least when you haven't hit balls, the main thing is to just kind of get a feel for it.”

Replacement Ping clubs were sent in from Arizona but they were beaten to it finally by his trusty bag, which contained a snapped back-up driver.