Max Homa Finding Groove, Back to Quail Hollow’s Battle

Charlotte, North Carolina – Max Homa has changed almost everything he has in his golf life over the past 10 months.

His longtime friend and Caddy Joe Greiner are no longer with him when he was on the fairway on the Quail Hollow Country Club this week (the venue where he won the Wells Fargo Invitational in 2019). His new caddie, Bill Harke, now holds his bag, is filled with a brand new golf club after Homa switches equipment and clothing sponsors in the offseason. Homa also swapped swing coaches from Mark Blackburn to John Scott Rattan.

“I don’t recommend switching your club and coach at the same time, or your golf swing,” Homa said Friday. “But I did.”

All of these changes are combined with the worst part of Homa’s career. Homa has been declining since he finished eighth in the Masters last year, winning five straight consecutive wins this season and looking for a swing that could rebuild him.

“I’ve played a lot of golf over the past seven months, like ridiculous golf,” Homa said. “It’s hard. I feel like I’m playing a foreign swing sometimes.”

Through all this, Homa has been firmly showing that he has performed better than his score, and in the second round of the PGA Championship on Friday, Homa found the best leg since the 2023 BMW championship and hit the Under 64 7 in the Grand Slam. Homa ended the day in fifth place with a bottom five advantage.

This is not entirely everywhere. Homa looked comfortable again at Augusta this year, where he finished his twelfth time with a draw, but he did beat only one golfer on the 70-man field of the Royal Bank of Canada legacy. Last week, at the Truist Championship, Homa said he performed as well as his recent memory and ended No. 30 with a tie.

“It’s hard because I feel like I’m so destructive,” Homa said.[My wife] I would ask me at home, like, “How are you today?” I would say, “It’s great”, we’ll leave the next day, and I’ll shoot hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s hard to explain. It has no psychology. It’s just a little bit of spirit, a lack of confidence mixed with the golf swing, and the golf swing cannot be repeated. ”

According to Homa, a breakthrough is not a single repair, but a combination of things and a commitment to the process. First, he decided to tell Rattan how he should “feel” his swing, similar to his old swing from the 2022-23 season, which were two wins. Homa then partnered with his new equipment sponsor Cobra on a driver’s setup that suits swings. In short, the updated driver has been set to go left, which allows Homa to swing freely and swing faster, allowing him to keep the ball speed for several miles.

“It’s already fast, but I’ve encountered something in the golf swing, otherwise I’m stuck in the golf swing. So I can’t let it go,” Homa said. “Suddenly, a lot of things come across, I don’t feel like I’m fighting anything, so I think that’s where the speed jumps.”

On Friday, when Homa opened fire and shot 30 times on the first nine, it all combined perfectly on Friday, thanks to four birdies and an eagle, driving 4 14 greens and leaving a snatch. When he finished the game, he jumped 70 seats and scored a high of 3rd, leading by stroke: driving that day, third overall in the tournament.

As he walked out of the 18th hole and headed towards the scoring section, Homa played something he couldn’t show after a while of competition: a smile.

“When you get stuck in ruts, you have to do that first, right?” Huck said, “So it’s like everyone telling him he’s been closed for months and he has to tell himself. A round like today is the kind of round he will be remembered and hope to realize he is back. ”

Whether HOMA can repeat Friday’s performance remains to be seen. He felt the natural fluctuations of the game than most people and knew that a feel-good swing wouldn’t automatically translate into a good score.

But for a player who said golf “don’t like him” three months ago and described his relationship with the sport as “toxic”, a round like Friday is not only a welcome development, but also a validation of what he does. This also helped, which was successful at Quail Hollow at Homa.

“When I started to feel really good, I knew I would come here and swing well,” Homa said. “I just needed to find some comfort. This place did it for me.”