Max Homa was on top of the world. He played golf at the highest level. He was on the U.S. teams for both the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup. And then he wasn’t.
At about the same time his game started to leave him, he was neck deep in social media. But you know social media. There were haters. And that’s hard to take.
He confessed that it was easy to get addicted to X. So he just stopped, adding that if something really important happened, he’d hear about it some other way.
At about that same time, Homa was in search of his golf game. He’d won six times on the PGA Tour at tough courses, the majority of which had also held majors: the Farmers Insurance Open, at Torrey Pines (U.S. Open), the Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow in Charlotte (PGAs and Presidents Cup), the Genesis at Riviera Country Club (U.S. Open, PGAs, Senior Open), and the Fortinet at Silverado in Napa. Then his game evaporated.
He became unexceptional. It was brutal, actually.
“I think in pretty much anything, it's just easy to quit when it gets hard. So last year and a lot of the year prior, it was very hard. But I've always promised myself I'll quit this game at some point, but I'm not going to quit when it's too hard for me to deal with,” Homa admitted ahead of this week's RBC Heritage event in Hilton Head.
And that was part of the secret. He just didn’t quit.
“Doesn't mean I won't get frustrated. But just keep showing up,” he said. “I think there's a massive skill in showing up and doing the work that gets taken for granted.”
It was last May when he began to see changes that he knew were the breadcrumbs he needed to follow to get back to top level.
“I knew that I had gotten through the really bad part, that it was probably going to take a minute to find a week where it started to move forward,” he explained.
Another key was that last October, he went back to the swing coach he worked with when he was playing really well, Mark Blackburn.
“We obviously put a lot of work in in the offseason, and he's just been amazing,” Homa said, clearly pleased. “It was nice to get a result last week, kind of for him, because he's done a lot better job than I've shown in the last couple months. So that's been fun to kind of get the band back together.”
An amusing anecdote was when Homa said he remembered being at Hilton Head two years ago, and he was wondering if he should go to the gym or not. Then he saw Scottie Scheffler walk by with a gym bag and figured that he should probably be doing that, too.
“I think when you look at excellence, when a week ends, a new one just begins and you pick right back up,” he said.
His explanation of what has happened was that his swing path had gotten outside, and while he likes to play a cut, he had gone too far in that direction.
“We got a bit more neutral and spent a lot of time over the offseason kind of workshopping things,” he added.
By the time they got to Augusta, Homa said he had opened up his grip. Too much, according to Blackburn. So, they adjusted it. And it certainly worked out well, as he tied for ninth, marking his first top-10 finish in a major in two years and his only such finish in nine starts anywhere in 2026.
When it comes to playing tough holes, his best advice came from his sports psychologist.
“Just get up there, trust your golf swing, trust the club you picked, trust the wind you decide you think it is, and make the best swing you can, and you can almost close your eyes and know if you did a good job or not, and then hope to God it's on grass,” Homa concluded.
It wasn't all a painful journey. There were bonuses for the kids.
“My son now has a Seminole golf shirt and an Augusta golf shirt with the Masters logo,” Homa said. “He's been very fortunate to have some pretty cool gear.”
However, as far as collectibles, his house is a no gnome zone. It’s not an aversion to Masters gnomes, specifically. There is a Heritage plaid starter gnome this week, the third in a series that has already featured golfers and caddies at Harbour Town, and he didn't buy those either.
“This proves that I'm not anti-plaid, but we're just not gnome people,” he said with a straight face.
Add us as a preferred source on Google