The second Signature Event of the 2025 PGA Tour season teed off on Thursday. Eighty of the world's most talented golfers tackled either Pebble Beach or Spyglass Hill Golf Course at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Several stars played very well, including Viktor Hovland.

The Norwegian pro carded a 7-under 65 and sits just one shot off Russell Henley's lead. He is joined by a bunch of international players including Justin Rose, Rasmus Hojgaard, Sepp Straka, and Cam Davis. One American is also in the clubhouse at 7-under: The 2024 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year nominee Jake Knapp.

On the eve of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Hovland made an interesting comment to the media, trashing his own game, saying, “I suck.”

Following his stellar round, Vik didn't back away from those comments.

“I'm still not happy with my game, how it looks, but that doesn't mean that I can have great individual days or great individual tournaments,” said Hovland.

“I'm trying to obviously get my mind out of the technical aspects of it and just trying to play golf.”

Viktor Hovland Rise and Fall on PGA Tour

Hovland ascended to the top of the PGA Tour world in 2023. He captured the Tour Championship following an excellent season. Since that time, though, things have not gone very smoothly for the 27-year-old. He logged just two top-10s in 16 starts on Tour without notching a victory. Hovland split with his swing coach not once but twice since then.

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To make matters worse, Hovland suffered a toe injury recently. The cumulative effect clearly got the Oslo native into his head. But he appears to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

“2023 I had the best season of my career and I know I can play at that level again. And I want to play at that level every single time.

“But I know that as I'm hitting worse and worse shots, eventually you kind of have to be a little bit kinder to yourself and just go, OK, I might hit some terrible shots but let's try to hit the terrible shots in an OK position instead of in the water or short-siding myself. Let's try to plot my way around and shoot OK scores and then we can work on things after the round and just keep getting a little bit better.”

He was able to maneuver around quite well on Thursday. He carded eight birdies, dropping only one shot on the par-4 9th. But no one should be that surprised Hovland played beautifully during the first round. He knows this course extremely well.

Hovland won the U.S. Amateur here in 2018 and then was Low Amateur at Pebble Beach for the 2019 U.S. Open.

He'll look to keep that momentum going Friday as he'll tee off at 9:27 am PT.