'This Is Still the Best Competition There Is': Max Homa at Home on the PGA Tour
Max Homa has emerged not only as one of the top players on the PGA Tour but a sensible spokesman whose views are sought and appreciated.
While the defending champion of this week’s Fortinet Championship might have acquired social media stardom—as he said—before his performance backed him up on the course, he’s nonetheless seeing success, having just come off a fifth-place finish in the FedEx Cup and being selected for his first U.S. Presidents Cup team next week.
Max Homa has won four times on the PGA Tour and is realizing one of his longtime goals next week when he plays at the Presidents Cup.
USA Today
That latter goal is one of the reasons he said he was not interested in LIV Golf, the disruptive competitor that is still the talk of the game as the PGA Tour begins its 2022-23 season on Thursday.
The fifth LIV Golf Invitational Series event will begin Friday, and the circuit’s ability to lure away a decent number of name players has left many, including Homa, searching for what it all means and where it will lead.
“The landscape of golf seems like it's changing,’’ Homa said Wednesday during a news conference at Silverado Resort and Spa, where the tournament begins Thursday. “As a fan and a member of the PGA Tour, I'm not happy about the fact that it feels like it's fraying professional golf. There's a lot of people who are being snarky out there and picking at things on both sides—I'm not picking on one side, on both sides—and that's a bummer because I love this game, I love the PGA Tour, and I just want to see professional golf succeed.
“I'm biased. I would like it to succeed out here, but I think it's easy to look at it and say the PGA Tour is getting diluted a bit with the competition, but there's a lot of great golfers in the world and there's going to be more come up through the professional ranks. And even if they do split a bit, this is still currently the best competition there is in golf and I'm happy to be a part of it and try to help progress that further.’’
After a slow start to his PGA Tour career, Homa, 31, who was a standout college player at Cal, has won four times since 2019. He won the Fortinet a year ago and also the Wells Fargo Championship in May as part of the 2021-22 PGA Tour season.
With the help of a 62 three weeks ago during the second round of the Tour Championship, he ended up fifth in the overall FedEx Cup standings. He is now ranked 22nd in the world.
Homa said he felt no negativity towards players who decided to make the jump to LIV Golf but said he wondered himself about the plight of world ranking points—still to be determined—and how it would impact other goals.
“Everyone’s got a choice in life,’’ Homa said. “It's great for the guys who have made their decision to go over there because as long as it makes you happy and you're doing what you think is best for your game, your family, whatever, it's great.
“But for me, I guess the question mark on the world ranking points was a big deal for me, the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup were enormous deals for me, and my love for the PGA Tour was the end-all, be-all for me. Those three things made a big part.
“I would love to be the No. 1 player in the world, but I damn sure want to know how far up that list I can get and I didn't want to have to risk that opportunity. There's just not anything I would have traded out for that. I want to see where that goes. And so for me, everyone's got a different choice and that's just where I kind of stood on that.’’