Viktor Hovland tamed the Snake Pit, making birdies on two of the final three holes to edge Justin Thomas by one stroke and win the 2025 Valspar Championship on Sunday in Palm Harbor, Florida.
Hovland closed with a final-round 4-under 67 at Innisbrook Resort’s Copperhead Course to win for the seventh time on the PGA Tour and first time since 2023.
“It’s unbelievable to see that I could win because I honestly didn’t believe that I could do it this week,” Hovland said.
Mired in a slump since winning the 2023 FedEx Cup and starring at the Ryder Cup in Rome later that year, Hovland shared the 54-hole Valspar lead and came out roaring with birdies on two of his first three holes. He poured in a left-to-right bender at the first to grab the lead at 8-under and stretched it to two strokes with a 15-footer at three. His lone bogey on the front nine at No. 7 dropped him into a four-way tie for the lead.
Thomas, who opened with a 4-over 40 on the front nine Thursday and had to sweat out the 36-hole cut on Friday, charged into contention on Saturday with a tournament-best 65.
“I felt like if I made this cut I was going to have a chance to win the tournament. And I had a really good chance,” he said.
Thomas was seeking to end an even longer winless drought, dating to the 2022 PGA Championship. In the final round, his putter, which has been responsible for his dip in performance, was rock solid. He birdied three of the first six holes and was the first player to reach double-digits-under par for the week after a birdie at No. 12, his fifth of the day. He tacked on birdies at Nos. 14 and 15 and held a three-shot lead before Hovland birdied the par-5 14th too. Entering the Snake Pit, Thomas held the edge but missed the fairway at 16 and 18 — both to the left — and made bogeys and signed for 66 and a 10-under 274 total.
“It sucks not winning when you’re that close and have a great chance, but I just hopefully put myself in the same position in [three] weeks at Augusta and finish it off better,” he said of the Masters, the first men’s major of the season.
Hovland made birdie at the first two legs of the Snake Pit, sticking his approach at 16 to 6 feet and to 12 feet at 17. Thomas’s bogey at the last meant Hovland could afford a bogey at the last and still win with a 72-hole aggregate of 11-under 273 total. Somehow Hovland pieced his swing together a week after shooting a first-round 80 at the Players Championship.
“I hit a lot of disgusting shots but they just happened to go where I was looking,” he said. “I can still hit good shots but there are also some bad shots in there. It’s still the same tendencies.”
During Hovland’s 15-month slump, his world ranking dipped from fourth to No. 19 entering this week. He missed his third straight cut last week at the Players and hadn’t made the weekend in a tournament with a cut yet this season. After missing the cut two weeks ago at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Hovland switched coaches, returning to Grant Waite, who he worked with briefly last season, his fourth different coach since the start of the year.
“I’m trying to get to the bottom of this,” he told Golfweek on Wednesday on the eve of the tournament. “From the outside, it looks kind of chaotic but to get to the bottom of stuff you have to make decisions like that.”
Hovland said he nearly didn’t play this week but since he was already in Florida and his new coach could spend time with him, he decided to go ahead and compete. It was a decision that paid quick dividends.
