NASSAU, Bahamas – Max Homa experienced pangs of guilt as he left his wife and newborn son, Cam, to compete in this week’s Hero World Challenge at Albany Club.
“Didn’t expect it to be this kind of difficult,” he said. “I feel guilty being in beautiful Bahamas while my wife’s grinding changing diapers, but here I am so might as well play well.”
Homa, who has ascended to No. 16 in the Official World Golf Ranking and won the Fortinet Championship to start the 2022-23 PGA Tour campaign, took time during his pre-tournament press conference to reflect on the year that was and compared the LIV-PGA Tour drama to being in high school all over again.
“Every week was kind of fun in a way, or funny. It got old, but every Monday, Tuesday was, ‘Did you hear so-and-so is going? Is that true? Did you hear this about this tournament? Is that true?’ It felt like you were in high school again in a way and you just got out to lunch and you got a text while you were in math that somebody got in a fight with somebody and now you’re going to go figure out what part of that was true, and rarely any of that was true, which is exactly how this season was for us. So, I think part of it is just like enjoying the little noise.”
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Homa counted himself among the “fortunate,” who didn’t get caught in the rumor mill and have to field a steady diet of questions of whether they were going to be the next player to jump to LIV.
“You know, hearing stories about certain guys saying, ‘Oh, I hear he’s gone.’ and then I’ll talk to them and they’ll say, ‘I haven’t talked to them in months,’ so this is just made up. I feel bad for them, I feel that’s a much harder gig.
“Obviously what Rory’s been doing and playing so well, kind of feels like two jobs, is tricky. Mine was just the fun end of it. Hear a rumor, joke about the rumor, forget about the rumor and move along, so it wasn’t so bad for me.”
Yet in a twisted way, Homa said he tried to insert himself into the conversation “just for the fun of it,” and cracked that it was “a huge insult” that his efforts to do so went unnoticed.
“I guess it would have been cool to be a part of that so I could live the life of, you know, it felt like a reality TV series for a bit,” he said. “I guess I tried. I changed my bio on Twitter once when I think Brooks changed his bio and everyone figured out he was going or something like that. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to get in on this and see if people catch on,’ but didn’t realize that my Twitter bio doesn’t get a ton of traction, so that was news to me.
“The craziness of all of this was I feel like a little more outside than it was inside. Inside, like I said, I thought it was funny and fun, we were just trying to make light of it. It’s people’s lives, they can do what they want to do. I don’t know, I feel like a lot of us had fun with it. I had fun with it. It was taken as, like, slights to the LIV Tour, but I never meant, I just make fun of everything that I do and other people do. So it was funny. I would have liked to be caught in the rumor mill so I could have run with it for a little while, it would have been good for that PIP thing, but was not lucky enough to be caught up.”
As for the ‘PIP thing,’ Homa banked an additional $3 million for finishing 14th in the standing but was none too happy to finish one spot back of Kevin Kisner, his partner in the 2021 QBE Shootout.
Although it’s not the result we wanted, I must say congrats to all the competitors for a great battle. We’ll get back to the drawing board and figure out new ways to impact the #golf world. It’s a #1 or bust mentality (besides Tiger, I can’t beat that guy) https://t.co/VxdqcqvQA1
— max homa (@maxhoma23) November 22, 2022
“I’m not quite sure how that happened. Played better than him, carried him at the QBE last year, so not sure how I lost to him, so that was disappointing,” he said. “Just back to the drawing board, got to figure out more ways to impact the golfing world. I am surprised that I’m 16 in the world and I was 14 on the PIP. I always thought I was significantly more popular than I was good at golf, so it feels nice that those things are aligning, so that’s a little mini bonus, but at the end of the day I’ll take 14th is pretty good.”
“It is a little confusing how it works, but it does seem to work,” Homa added. “Tiger won again, so as long as he’s winning, it’s not broken, so that’s good.”
