Tag: Max Homa

Scottie Scheffler’s dominance is forcing Max Homa, Wyndham Clark to get better. But can they close the gap?

Homa called Scheffler, “one of the best players I think we’ll ever see.”

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – In the lead up to the 88th Masters last week, ESPN commentators were asked how they thought Scottie Scheffler would do if he putted adequately. When host Scott Van Pelt weighed in on the chances of the world No. 1, he didn’t hesitate to say that Scheffler should be the pick.

“There’s a reason why his odds are in Tiger territory. They’re as low as anyone’s we’ve seen since Tiger. That’s because the answer to your question, if he putts adequately, he wins,” Van Pelt said. “Sometimes you don’t have to try so hard. You don’t have to squint so hard to see the answer. It’s just a big bold type in front of your face, Scottie Scheffler. Scottie Scheffler is going to play well at Augusta, the end. When he does on Sunday and he’s right there with a chance, you’ll go, of course. If he putts well, then he’ll win. It’s really that simple, isn’t it?”

Two-time U.S. Open winner Andy North seconded the notion as only he can. “It’s like that hot doughnut sign about 1 in the morning,” he added.

“We all know that one,” Van Pelt said.

Scheffler, 27, may be at the start of a historic run. He shot a final-round 68 at Augusta National to win the green jacket for the second time, and claimed his third victory in his last four starts.

“He’s just been annoying everyone for the last three months, hasn’t he?” Matt Fitzpatrick, the 2022 U.S. Open champion, said.

Max Homa, who finished tied for third at the Masters, called Scheffler, “one of the best players I think we’ll ever see.”

The predominant belief among the players is that the gap between Scheffler and everyone may not be the size of the Grand Canyon but it’s wider than Rae’s Creek.

Wyndham Clark, the reigning U.S. Open champion, has run into the Scheffler buzzsaw on multiple occasions this season, finishing second to him at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship. (Clark missed the cut at his first Masters.)

“The thing that I really am impressed by him is just the consistency that he’s always in contention, and either he wins or he finishes kind of top 5. I do think there’s a little gap right now, and I’m hoping as I progress as a player mentally and physically and everything that maybe by the end of the year or sometime next year maybe I’ve closed that gap a little bit,” he said.

Clark is motivated to get better for future battles and is confident his best is good enough to beat Scheffler even when’s he’s playing well. But the pursuit of better is what drives him.

2024 Masters
Wyndham Clark walks off the No. 2 green during the first round of the 2024 Masters Tournament. (Photo: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Network)

“It just brings the overall quality of play up significantly when someone is playing that good all the time. I think everyone looks at themselves in the mirror and goes, what do I need to get better at because you feel like you’re playing good golf and you’re not beating him,” Clark said. “I think it would be great if we could have multiple guys that are kind of battling it out all the time. I don’t know if that’s me or could be someone else, but I would love for it to be me, and I’m working as hard as I can to be that person.”

Homa played alongside Scheffler last year at the U.S. Open in Los Angeles and came away starstruck by Scheffler’s brilliance.

“I just kept thinking to myself, man, must be nice, that’s just incredible, and then he’s done it for a year. Those are like great weeks that you like harken back to. He does this every week,” Homa said. “It’s definitely unique what he’s doing.”

Homa was asked if he found trying to catch Scheffler to be more daunting or challenging?

2023 U.S. Open
Max Homa and Scottie Scheffler walk up the seventh hole during the first round of the 2024 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club. (Photo: Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports)

“More challenging, I would say. I think it’s inspiring. It makes you look at your game even more closely to figure out what you would do to get on his level,” Homa said. “I think because of the Tiger era when he was just running through golf tournament after golf tournament and just annihilating everybody, it was probably more daunting because we had never seen anything like that.”

Scheffler, for one, expressed concern that playing at Harbour Town Golf Links this week could be more challenging for him than the Masters as he battles fatigue, but he never considered withdrawing and staying home in Dallas with wife Meredith, who is awaiting the birth of their first child later this month.

“I think playing in contention at majors and especially winning takes a lot out of you. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on after the Masters on Sunday, and you get home very late, and emotionally I think I’m a bit drained,” Scheffler said.

But if the remaining 68 players in the field think this means that he’s grown complacent, think again. Scheffler made it clear he’s going to rest up and recover and aiming to bring home his fourth title in his last five starts.

“I’m not showing up here just to walk around and play a little golf,” he said. “I left my pregnant wife at home to come here and play in a golf tournament. I am here to play and hopefully play well. I’m not here just for fun.”

The birth of the Scheffler’s first child may be the only thing that can slow him down. Homa, for one, was asked if he’d be in favor of a mandatory three-month paternity leave?

“No, I want to beat his ass pretty bad at some point,” he said. “I’d be lying if I wasn’t thinking a little bit about last week if Meredith did go into labor. The beauty of this is you want to beat the best when they’re at their best.”

Why a ‘sweet woman’ bought Max Homa’s Chick-fil-A on the way to the RBC Heritage

“I just pinch myself at times with the kindness people have given me just because I play some golf.”

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — One day after finishing tied for third at the Masters and cashing a check for more than $1 million, Max Homa had a fan pay for his Chick-fil-A at the drive-thru.

“It was kind,” he said during his pre-tournament press conference at the 2024 RBC Heritage. “I just pinch myself at times with the kindness people have given me just because I play some golf. I feel very fortunate for that.”

Homa drove from Augusta, Georgia, where he shot a final-round 73 to record his best finish at a major. On Sunday night, he celebrated his wife Lacey’s upcoming birthday early and on Monday he made the three-hour drive to Harbour Town Golf Links for this week’s 69-man, no-cut signature event, and stopped along the way for a bite to eat.

“I absolutely demolished Chick-fil-A on my way down,” Homa said. “I was in the drive-thru by myself and I went to order and the person taking the order told me that the woman in the row next to me had paid for whatever I was going to get. She said that her son is 3 or 4 and I’m his favorite golfer, so it was pretty cool. I don’t know, those kinds of things I still pinch myself.”

Homa added that it was the typical busy two-line drive-thru set-up that runs like clockwork. Somehow, she managed to recognize Homa, who climbed into the top 10 in the world (No. 9) with his strong performance at the Masters. That three-way tie for third earned him $1.04 million for his 72-hole total of 4-under 284, matching Collin Morikawa and Tommy Fleetwood.

“She paid for it, I rolled my window down, we chatted for a minute or so, and then I ate it,” Homa said.

Homa deserved a treat after a memorable week. His record in the majors before the Masters was abysmal. It was an important week for the former Cal product to prove to the golf world – and himself – he can perform at golf’s biggest events, too.

“It was fun to wake up for a couple days and think, there’s a pretty decent chance I might be wearing a green jacket on Sunday and to still excel and feel good about my golf,” he said. “It reinforces that my golf game is good enough. I think most anybody who plays a major, it is. But until you get to feel that, you don’t know.”

He added: “Maybe a little bit of the monkey is off the back. I know I can, and the work I’m doing is right. It just comes down to the mental for me. I didn’t change anything about my golf game last week. I just really changed my head and got out of my own way and just played some golf.”

Homa is scheduled to tee on Thursday at 10:50 a.m. ET, in a pairing with Fleetwood.

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What is AimPoint Express? And why are so many PGA Tour pros using the green reading system?

Surprisingly, the creator said, developing this skill is easy.

Eight-foot putts are not typically stressful for PGA Tour pros, but the 8-foot par putt that Max Homa faced on Friday morning on the fifth at Augusta National had to be made if he was going to stay tied for the lead at the 2024 Masters. On the outside, he looked calm, but on the inside, he had to be feeling the pressure.

After both Tiger Woods and Jason Day finished the hole, the dance floor was Homa’s. With one foot on either side of his golf ball, he bent his right arm at about a 90-degree angle and held up his index finger and middle finger while staring at the hole. After backing up four paces, bending to take another look toward the hole, and then getting into his address position, Homa set his putter behind the ball. No practice strokes. He made a quick glance toward the cup, made his stroke and buried the putt.

“I mean, that is special,” said Colt Knost on the ESPN+ broadcast before Billy Ray Brown added, “That’s what champions do.”

Max Homa
Max Homa lines up a putt on the no. 9 green during the second round of the Masters Tournament. Mandatory Credit: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Network

But what was Homa doing with his fingers, which appeared to be what Will Zalatoris, Viktor Hovland, Keegan Bradley, Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa, Adam Scott and a growing number of other PGA Tour pros are doing? Like those other pros, Homa uses AimPoint Express. This green-reading technique was developed by Mark Sweeney, the man who created the AimPoint putting line that broadcasters like Golf Channel, NBC and CBS used to show viewers a virtual path a ball needed to travel to finish in the hole.

“AimPoint Express is a dramatic simplification of what is a very complicated computer program to figure out how the ball goes from Point A to Point B and goes into the hole,” Sweeney said. “AimPoint Express takes about 100,000 lines of code and converts it into the player feeling how much side tilt there is in the putt.”

What television viewers did not see during the broadcast of Homa’s putt on the fifth hole was that he had not only straddled his golf ball before he putted, but that he also stood halfway between his golf ball and the hole for a few seconds and tried to feel the tilt of the putting surface. Through practice and some training, Homa and other golfers can feel the difference between a one-, two- and three-percent slope to one side or another using their feet.

Then, standing over their golf ball, they extend an arm and hold up the number of figures that correspond to the estimated number of degrees in the tilt they felt — one finger for a one-percent slope, two fingers for a two-percent slope and so on.

Viktor Hovland and Will Zalatoris
Viktor Hovland and Will Zalatoris both use AimPoint Express. (Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Sports)

Sweeney accidentally discovered the relationship between the slope of a green, the length of a golfer’s arm and the width of a person’s fingers.

“I had a much more complicated method of reading greens prior to AimPoint Express,” said Sweeney. “But then I was teaching some young kids, 7- and 8-year-olds, and I had them put their thumb on the high side of the hole, just to get them aiming somewhere above the hole. It turns out that your thumb is perfect for one’s and two’s, it will get you close, but then we started experimenting with one finger per percent. We tested those reads against the math and it was insane how accurate it was. Like, it was within an inch or two every single time (from 20 feet).”

Knowing that, and seeing Homa on the fifth hole holding up two fingers, viewers familiar with AimPoint Express would know that Max was estimating that halfway to the hole, there was a two-perfect tilt in the green. From Homa’s perspective, his target on that putt was two fingers’ width to the right of the hole (probably about 4 inches right), and assuming he hit the putt directly at that target, he was right because the ball went in the cup.

Every week, pros can be seen practicing AimPoint Express and developing their sense of feel for slopes on the practice greens at PGA Tour events. Many of them bring a digital level, and as they stand along an intended putt line, they call out a slope percentage like one, two or three while their caddy looks at the level.

Surprisingly, Sweeney said, developing this skill is easy.

“Within about 15 minutes, most people are picking up half-degrees of slope,” he said. “People are much, much better at feeling slope than they think. Nobody is ever off by more than one percent. Like, it’s almost unheard of that a player is off by more than one percent. No one calls a one a three or a one a four because they are so dramatically different.”

Ben An
Ben An doing slope detection exercises with his caddie at Riviera Country Club. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

Sweeney claims that anybody, with a bit of practice, can accurately estimate to a half-percent. He also encourages golfers to calculate the slope along their putt’s length twice around halfway between the ball and the hole and use the bigger of the two estimations for their read. Some players, like Homa, take one reading and then turn around and repeat the estimation facing toward the ball to confirm their first reading.

In a Golf Channel interview, Homa said, “Your eyes can lie to you a lot, but your feet, typically, will never lie.”

Tiger Woods does not use AimPoint Express, and neither does Jordan Spieth or Jason Day. Brad Faxon, Loren Roberts and Ben Crenshaw never used it either. Some golfers have a great feel for green reading, spotting slopes and contours on the putting surface and understanding how putts will roll. However, many golfers are not blessed with this ability. Sweeney hates hearing that the skill will come with time and experience.

“As a coach, you have to take someone who doesn’t have a skill and give them that skill,” said Sweeney, who works with several tour pros and teaches lessons at Waldorf Astoria Golf Club in Orlando, Florida. “How do you teach someone green reading if they don’t naturally see what a good green reader sees? I thought ‘Just go do it and you’ll get better,’ was a really crappy answer. It’s like a full-swing instructor saying to someone, ‘I know you’re slicing it off the tee, but just go hit a lot of balls and you’ll get better.'”

Tom Kim
Tom Kim and his caddie practice reading greens with a digital level before the start of the Genesis Invitational. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

Aimpoint Express removes the need to walk around a hole and see your intended putt from multiple angles, so for Sweeney, it does not slow play as some people think.

Sweeney postulates that the better a golfer gets at reading greens, the more time they can spend working on improving distance control and developing the quality of their putting stroke.

“It’s really helped me to read the greens, obviously, but it’s turned a lot of that into better speed,” Homa said on Golf Channel. “I’m shocked more people don’t do it, if I am being honest.”

Max Homa calls out major championship troll the only way he knows how

Homa is the social media gift that keeps on giving.

Max Homa is the social media gift that keeps on giving.

The best follow in golf was back at it on Monday, but not for his classic swing video roasts. Homa, a six-time winner on the PGA Tour who has self-admittedly struggled in the major championships, called out an internet troll from his wife Lacey’s TikTok page for blaming her and his son, Cam, for his major woes.

“That kid and wife are keeping from majors. I’d tell them everyday you’re giving up green jackets for them. Just so they know!” the commenter wrote.

Well, Homa wasn’t having any of that and called out the troll the only way he knew how: with self-deprecating humor.

Classic Max. Just for fun, though, let’s take a look at the stats.

Homa was married in November of 2019 and Lacey gave birth to their son in November of 2022. He made 11 major starts in his pre-child major era and missed the cut seven times. When Homa did make the cut, he finished T-40 (2021 Open), T-48 (2022 Masters), T-13 (2022 PGA) and T-47 (2022 U.S. Open).

In four major starts in 2023 since Cam’s birth, Max has missed just one cut at the U.S. Open and finished T-43 at the Masters, T-55 at the PGA and logged his best major finish with a T-10 at the Open.

Homa will get his next shot at major glory at the 2024 Masters, April 11-14.

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Rory McIlroy, Max Homa, Lexi Thompson and Rose Zhang dish on Capital One’s The Match, mixed golf and playing under the lights

The 12-hole event will be live on TNT, truTV, HLN and streaming on Max starting at 6:30 p.m. ET.

Capital One’s The Match is back, and it’s unlike any version before.

For the first time, the live golf series event will feature mixed golf competition between Rory McIlroy, Max Homa, Lexi Thompson and Rose Zhang on Monday, Feb. 26, at “The Park” in West Palm Beach, Florida, under the lights.

The format is mixed skins, with each hole being worth a specified amount for charity.

All four golfers will utilize the same tees for the four par-3 holes in the routing, while the remaining eight holes will use varying tee boxes and yardages for the men and women. The golfer raising the most funds through the skins format at the end of the event will be declared the winner.

The 12-hole event will be live on TNT, truTV, HLN and streaming on Max starting at 6:30 p.m. ET.

On Thursday, the four golfers held a press conference with media members to discuss The Match, playing golf under the lights and what they look forward to when playing mixed competitions. Here’s what they had to say:

10 of the best players at the Genesis Invitational over the last 5 seasons

These players love Riviera.

The PGA Tour’s third signature event of the year has arrived, and a loaded field is in Los Angeles for the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club.

Tiger Woods, who hasn’t played an official Tour event since the Masters, last teed it up at the PNC Championship in December. Before that, he placed 18th at the Hero World Challenge.

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland, Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele, Max Homa and Justin Thomas are among the players who will join Woods.

Reigning champion Jon Rahm is unable to defend his title due to his move to LIV Golf.

Genesis: Picks to win, odds

Here are 10 of the best players at the Genesis Invitational over the past five seasons.

Rickie Fowler, Max Homa among notables who missed the cut at the 2024 WM Phoenix Open

The cut at TPC Scottsdale didn’t happen until nearly 2 p.m. local time Saturday.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Rain delays, frost delays, 4:30 a.m. alarm clocks, playing as many as 30 holes in one day and 20,000 drunk, screaming and often booing fans – and that’s just at 16 – this is a week where PGA Tour pros earned their paycheck at the WM Phoenix Open. Yet the 132-man field still must be whittled down, even if the 36-hole cut day extended to nearly 2 p.m. local time on Saturday thanks to multiple suspensions of play.

When it was all said and done, 73 players moved on for 36 more holes at TPC Scottsdale and a chance to take home the trophy as champion and more than seven figures in prize money. The total purse this week is $8.8 million, with $1.584 million going to the winner.

It took a score of 2-under 140 to make all that hard work and effort pay off into a paycheck in the Valley of the Sun.

Among those to sneak through on the number included Tom Kim, who rallied to shoot 5-under 66, Garrick High (67), Adam Scott (68), Brian Harman (69), Sungjae Im (70) and Zach Johnson (70).

Two of the three Monday qualifiers made it through in Jim Knous (66, T-34) — read his story here — and former Arizona State golfer Nicolo Galetti (67, T-34) as did Bud Cauley (-5, T-23), who made his first start since the 2020 Fortinet Championship. Kevin Chappell (68) made a 12-foot birdie putt at nine, his last hole of the day, to make the cut on the number.

But not everyone was so fortunate — Adam Svensson, for one, missed a birdie putt from 44 feet. Here’s a closer look at the notables who were sent packing at the WM Phoenix Open.

Max Homa says when he retires, he’ll be a fan at the WM Phoenix Open: ‘I’ll go where the liquid takes me’

Here’s some of this best comments from his pre-tournament news conference.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Max Homa is one of the better quotes in golf and he proved it once again at his Wednesday pre-tournament news conference at the 2024 WM Phoenix Open.

Having only gotten in five holes during the celebrity pro-am before heavy rains halted the affair, Homa walked down the ramp under the clubhouse at TPC Scottsdale to the media center, where he doled out one gem after another.

He’s played the event five times and despite just one top 10 (a T-6 in 2020) he always loves competing in the tournament.

During his media session, Homa was easily engaged in conversation about the Strategic Sports Group’s ambitions, making golf more appealing to a younger demo and the 16th hole craziness. He even admitted that one day, he could see himself among the fans, partaking in the fun in all its forms at the tournament.

Here are some of his best comments:

10 of the best players at the WM Phoenix Open over the last 5 seasons

Is the winner this week on this list?

The world’s best players are in Arizona this week for the PGA Tour’s annual party in the desert, the WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale.

World No. 1 and back-to-back defending champion Scottie Scheffler returns hoping to make it a three-peat, while a loaded field including Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Max Homa and Wyndham Clark will try to stop him.

Thomas, thanks to his recent form and course history at TPC Scottsdale, is one of the popular picks to win this week at 10/1.

Listed below are 10 players with some of the best course history at the WM Phoenix Open over the last five seasons.

WM Phoenix Open: Picks to win, odds

Thomas Detry’s walk-off birdie among 5 things to know at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

Here’s what you need to know from the opening round of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Less than a week ago, Thomas Detry was leading the Farmers Insurance Open in the third round when he spun a wedge from 90 yards back into the water and made double bogey. He admitted it was “a punch in the face.” He went on to shoot 2-over 74 a day later and finished T-20. On Thursday at Spyglass Hill, he was cruising along once again when he fatted his approach at the final hole. But this time there was no penalty area to ruin a good round. This time, he pitched in from about 20 yards short of the green to shoot 9-under 63 and take a one-stroke lead over Patrick Cantlay after the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

“It was an uphill lie, I felt pretty comfortable I would put it within 3 feet to be honest,” Detry said in his post-round interview. “And it rolled nicely, just trickled in the hole. It was lovely to watch.”

Pebble Beach Pro-Am: Best celebrity photos | Friday tee times

Detry, a 31-year-old pro from Belgium, said having an extra day to get over last week’s disappointment – the Farmers Insurance Open is the only PGA Tour event that ends on Saturday – helped put it behind him.

“Last weekend was a tough pill to swallow,” he said. “I played some great golf and I didn’t really have the finish that I wanted to. I was in contention the whole weekend except the last five or six holes.”

On Thursday, the weatherman was wrong with his dreary forecast and sunshine prevailed during the opening round. It still was breezy and the tree-lined Spyglass course served as a buffer and allowed for slightly better scoring than at Pebble Beach Golf Links. Detry birdied his first three holes of the day and came home in 30 with a flurry of three straight birdies to cap the day.

Here are four more things to know from the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

MORE: Rory McIlroy assessed two-shot penalty for illegal drop at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am