BMW Championship, Hovland beats Scheffler

• golf

In view of the Ryder Cup in Rome, scheduled from 29 September to 1 October on the course of the Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, Europe scares the USA. At Olympia Fields, in the United States, the Norwegian Viktor Hovland, the new star of continental golf, beat the American Scottie Scheffler, number 1 in the world, winning the BMW Championship in a sprint, the penultimate act of the PGA Tour play-offs.

BMW Championship, results

In Illinois, the 25-year-old from Oslo with a final round in 61 (-9) strokes, out of a total of 263 (69 68 65 61, -17), achieved the new course record (Olympia Fields Country Club, par 70) and took the entire stake.

The success earned him 3,600,000 dollars against a total prize pool of 20,000,000 and allowed him to leap from 7th to 2nd position in the FedEx that he will try to win in Atlanta, from August 24th to 27th, in the last act of the season: the Tour Championship.

Not only that: Hovland, who scored ten birdies in the decisive round, with a bogey, remained in 5th place in the world rankings but has his sights set on the top positions. No way for Scheffler. Still leading the FedEx Cup, the American finished the tournament in 2nd place with 265 (-15) shots, the same score as the Englishman Matt Fitzpatrick, another European player sure of a place for the Ryder Cup in Rome.

Behind them the Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy, 4th with 268 (-12) ahead of the Americans Brian Harman and Max Homa, both 5th with 269 (-11). The challenge between the USA team and the Europe team has already come alive. If Scheffler, Harman and Homa, along with Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele and Wyndham Clark, are among the six American players who automatically qualified for the Ryder, Hovland and Fitzpatrick, along with McIlroy and Spaniard Jon Rahm, will be the stars of the Old Continent.

Another feat for Hovland who, at Olympia Fields, celebrated his fifth title on the PGA Tour to which two other feats must be added, respectively in 2021 and 2022, in the Hero World Challenge, an unofficial tournament of the top American circuit.

In his palmares there are also two affirmations in the DP World Tour for a talent that also boasts respectively a seventh and a second place at The Masters 2023 and at the PGA Championship 2023. The PGA Tour became its own organization in 1968, when it split from the PGA of America, which is now primarily an association of golf professionals, such as instructors and club managers.

Tournament players first formed their own organization, the Association of Professional Golfers (APG). Later, in 1968, the players abolished the APG and agreed to operate as the PGA "Tournament Players Division", a fully autonomous division of the PGA, overseen by a new 10-member Tournament Policy Board. The name then officially changed to "PGA Tour" in 1975.