Our Andrew Tursky spoke with Ping PGA Tour rep Kenton Oates for a story we filed for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report earlier this week. The subject of the discussion? Not surprisingly, back-to-back playoff winner and FedEx Cup Champion Viktor Hovland and his weapons of choice.

Hovland, who was eighth on the PGA Tour in total strokes gained this season, has made a much-publicized effort to improve his balky short game this season with coach Joe Mayo. Impressively, for a player who says he “sucks at chipping” the Norwegian improved from 193 to 93 in strokes gained: around-the-green. While technical adjustments and good-old-fashioned sweat equity paid the greatest dividends in Hovland’s improved short game, he also made a change to his Ping Glide 2.0 60-degree wedge, as Oates explains.

“Viktor plays with the same wedge model he used to play with, but it was a 58-degree bent to 60 degrees before. Every time you bend a club weak, it’s a 1:1 ratio (weakening the club 1 degree adds 1 degree of bounce).

“So we were just trying to give him some protection (with the extra 2 degrees of bounce). The credit I’ll give Viktor is that even when he wasn’t chipping well, he never was a kid who was going to run from the shot. If the shot required you to open the face dead up, and hit a flop shot, he was always like, “I’m going to try and hit it.

“To his credit, that takes a lot of guts to do that. A lot of guys would say to themselves, “Well, I’m one of the best ball-strikers in the world. When I get in that situation two times out of 72 holes, I’m just going to play with more of a square face, and hit it to 15-20 feet, make my bogey, and go birdie the next three holes.

“He’s always wanted to be an elite chipper, and I think the attitude of just wanting to become an average chipper was never in his head, so he did need a club with less bounce. With his technique, in the past, we needed to give him more protection by adding that bounce.

“As he’s progressed, in this year, around THE PLAYERS Championship, or maybe around Augusta, we went to the same wedge he’d been playing, but now it’s the 60-degree model. So it has 2 degrees less of bounce, allowing the club to sit that much flatter to the ground when he opens it.”

Another morsel: While Hovland played Ping’s new Blueprint S irons briefly earlier this year, the irons didn’t last long in his bag. While Oates thinks he’ll test the new Blueprint irons again this offseason, Tursky wanted to know why the i210 irons work so well for Hovland.

“Oates: I think it really is that low center of gravity, and that higher spin rate the iron produces. He is such a shallow player. At times, he can under-spin it, and not get enough peak height. The 210s do spin quite a bit, because of the nature of the design, and they’re also a very straight-flying club. Some guys see curve and some guys don’t. I would say Viktor is a guy who doesn’t. He sees little curves, and he takes off distance by curving it more, but he’s a pretty straight ball hitter, and those irons allow him to be a straight ball hitter.”

For the full conversation, including a discussion of Hovland’s increased driving distance and beloved putter, check out the piece on PGATour.com.

Check out Hovland’s full WITB here.