Norwegian Viktor Hovland has begun finding his feet again this year after a disappointing 2024 campaign. He failed to win for the first time in his career across a single season last year and carded a career-low in top 10s.
Since his first win of the season at the Valspar Championship, Hovland seems to be getting back closer to his best.
The Ryder Cup star is yet to miss a cut since his win in Florida, something he failed to do in four of the six tournaments he played in previous to lifting the trophy at Innisbrook.
Earlier this year, in an interview with Espen Blaker of Eurosport, the 2023 FedEx Cup champion revealed he switched the make of his footwear - and for a very interesting reason.
He said, "I’ve gone back to some old Nike shoes. 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 ones 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.”
The shoes in question are the Nike Roshe Golf shoes, which he has worn for the majority of his career barring a spell with Puma Golf.
Helping him with his AimPoint technique when reading the greens, this change seemed to have ended to an exclusive shoe-only deal he signed with Puma only last year in April.
The change of footwear may or may not be helping, but it was certainly a big decision to make on his way back to the top of the game.
What Is AimPoint?
AimPoint Express is a way of predicting where to aim when putting. There's a lot of optical illusions on putting greens, and from testing thousands and thousands of golfers of varying abilities, people see about 50 percent of the correct aim line.
So, if we were to do an aim test with a subsection of golfers, and there's two-foot of break, they'd all be happy aiming at about one-foot. Visually, everyone under-reads putts by around 50 percent. So, AimPoint enables players to quickly learn where to aim by feeling slopes.
The ball breaks differently across different values of slopes, so we teach people to measure that and then use it to read a putt. So, simply, it's a system of knowing where to aim.
