By Christopher Powers
With a lot of golf left to be played, we can’t say for sure that Viktor Hovland will go back-to-back at this week’s Hero World Challenge. What we do know is this: nobody in the field will leave Albany with a better tournament highlight reel than the former US Amateur winner.

On Thursday, Hovland took dead aim with driver at the short par-4 14th, nearly making a bit of (unofficial) history in the process. His tee shot came inches from finding the bottom of the cup for a hole-in-one on a par 4, something that’s only been done once in PGA Tour history by Andrew Magee at the 2001 Waste Management Phoenix Open. Technically, it would have still been the only time even if Hovland’s had dropped since the Hero is not an official event, but that wouldn’t have made it any less impressive.

Less than 24 hours later, Hovland took dead aim again, and this time his ball actually found the bottom of the cup for another eagle at the par-5 sixth. But this was no ordinary “found the bottom of the cup”, this was a slam-dunk eagle that slam-dunked so hard you could hear the satisfying sound clearly on the broadcast:

SHEESH. Notice the wind gusts, too. Up to 20mph gusts are being reported from Albany in The Bahamas, which ratchets up the difficulty of this shot to around 15 out of 10. Brooklyn Nets forward Ben Simmons can’t do this inside of an arena directly underneath the basket. Hovland’s out here doing it with a wedge in his hand and gale-force wins. OK, that was uncalled for. Sorry, Ben.

Ben Simmons potshots aside, that was an absolutely insane shot, and a very last-minute submission for shot of the year. These guys are (stupid) good.

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