SAN DIEGO — Max Homa had found it, that elusive sense of clarity that athletes chase through the darkest valleys of their careers. For a year, he wrestled with the ache of knowing something was fundamentally amiss yet finding himself unable to bridge the gap between recognition and remedy. The fleeting moments of brilliance that punctuated his struggles served only to sharpen the contrast, like matches struck in darkness that offered brief illumination but no lasting light.
But in a practice day at last week’s WM Phoenix Open, he found it, saying his ball-striking was as good as it’s ever been. “I gave everybody on my team a hug because it finally felt like I was like going forward,” Homa said on Tuesday at Torrey Pines, ahead of this week’s relocated Genesis Invitational. “It's felt like I've been just going backwards for months.”
Three days later he missed the cut by five shots.
Golf's cruelty lies in this truth: Success is an illusion, one that taunts players at every level of the game. Even the world's elite professionals—those who have dedicated their lives to unraveling its mysteries and whose understanding of the sport dwarfs what most will ever grasp—find themselves betrayed by a game they once commanded. The loss of form isn't merely a slump; it's an evaporation, a disappearance without warning or explanation. And sometimes, most hauntingly, what vanishes never returns. Consider the psychological weight of showing up day after day to perform a job you've spent years mastering, armed with skills that have suddenly turned foreign in your hands. It's a special kind of torment that only golf seems capable of delivering.
This is Homa's reality. He reached the height of his profession last April, entering the final round of the 2024 Masters with a chance at the green jacket, submitted a performance to be proud of, and he ultimately tied for third. Since Augusta, however, Homa has been stumbling in the sport’s badlands, dropping from ninth in the World Ranking to 60th. He finished outside the top 20 in his last 11 PGA Tour starts last year and this season has been no better in four starts. That included a 77 a few weeks back at Torrey Pines at the Farmers Insurance Open before a WD.
Golf demands an unshakeable faith in one's abilities, and Homa, a 34-year-old veteran, possesses this in spades—you don't climb to the sport's summit without such self-belief coursing through your veins. But what makes Homa extraordinary is his understanding that vulnerability and confidence aren't opposing forces, but rather two sides of the same competitive coin.
While his razor-sharp wit on X/Twitter has garnered him a devoted following, reducing him to merely a social-media personality misses the deeper resonance of his presence in the sport. Homa's true gift lies in his willingness to pull back the curtain on professional golf's psychological warfare, exposing the mental battles that most players carefully conceal behind practiced stoicism. He speaks openly about his struggles, acknowledging himself as an unfinished work—a refreshing departure from the polished veneers that tour professionals typically present. This transparency might not align with golf's traditional ethos of quiet suffering, but it provides something the sport's biggest stages have long lacked: an authentic voice that bridges the gap between the superhuman and the deeply human.
“For one, I know what I'm capable of,” Homa said Tuesday. “Secondly, I know that I am quite tough when it comes to this stuff. I've gone through this much worse before where the results weren't coming. I definitely have my low days. I've been incredibly frustrated since April. But I also see—I find pride in waking up after a hard day and having the energy to go get better.
“I do think at the end of all my days, and I would assume most people would think this way about themselves whatever walk of life you're in, whatever job you have, if I never have another good result again that would be a massive bummer, but … maybe in some years I could rest easy knowing I'm doing absolutely everything I possibly can to do that. I've always been quite proud of my work ethic, I think that's why I'm here. I think it's my best quality and has been ramped up about a thousand notches.”
Max Homa notched his best finish in a major when finishing third in last year's Masters.
Andrew Redington
This wasteland is familiar terrain for Homa. His early tour seasons were exercises in futility, and even after claiming a maiden tour win at the 2019 Wells Fargo Championship—a victory that should have heralded his arrival—the numbers painted him as just another face in professional golf's vast middle class. But the last four years have revealed a different Homa, one who transformed potential into prowess with six worldwide victories. His ascent reached such heights that success was no longer measured by trophies accumulated but scrutinized through the unforgiving lens of golf's four defining weeks.
Though majors had been his blind spot, last year's Masters performance proved he could stand toe-to-toe with anyone. Instead, he’s had to break everything down to build himself back up. There has been a lot of change. He switched equipment, going from Titleist to Cobra. After working with coach Mark Blackburn, the two split last summer. Though he describes himself as a “process” guy, this is a results-oriented business. “Also really hard to measure progress when you're playing against the best players in the world on the hardest golf courses,” Homa noted.
“Like, I worked so hard at the end of last season. Once I started, kind of found my coach and, I mean, we worked so hard and I was very hopeful that by Kapalua I would have it,” Homa continued. “I definitely felt like I did, but there were some things to work through, and I actually was really pleased when I left Hawaii. That's a tough first tournament to measure. I played really well, everything felt great, and you lose by 16 or whatever I lost by, get 25th [26th] place. But I went home, like, ‘OK, I'm very excited, this next stretch will be really good,’ and then in those two weeks off, it never really fully clicked.
“And, again, I felt like there was just one thing slightly off because I would hit the best shot of my life and then the next shot would feel way different, it would be way different. Been really trying to not look at the score as the point, but at some point it is. So it is difficult, so I'm just trying to use the idea that I'm going to have a long career after this, so just keep getting better. I need to and want to start seeing some results, but that's not going to deter me from like what I'm working on.”
Progress, as Homa was reminded, rarely follows a clean trajectory. Even after discovering that elusive missing piece last week, he stumbled out of the gates at TPC Scottsdale with a deflating 76. The setback led to a grueling Saturday practice session with his team, one that left him physically drained and emotionally raw. Yet in that exhaustion, in the sweat and frustration and countless repetitions, he found something that resembled clarity, if only for a moment.
“On the drive back, I just had a nice moment where I just thought to myself how much better the next win's going to feel than any win has felt,” Homa said. “It stinks. Not that I've ever taken anything for granted, but I know what that sweet relief of a great finish will kind of feel like. So I'm just trying to hold onto that as my motivating factor at the moment.”
Those who know Homa only through his social-media presence would barely recognize him in these moments. Gone is the affable jokester, replaced by something far more primal. His intensity creates an almost visible forcefield around him. Watch as he tears his glove off with his teeth when he plays, a gesture more predator than professional athlete. Or how the crowd's yells bounce off him, his gaze burning holes in the turf, each step carrying the weight of barely contained fury. In these instances, Homa carries himself with the stern gravity of a nursing home attendant who's already weathered three shifts of chaos and won't suffer a fourth.
“It's a hard game, man, and when it doesn't like you back, it gets very difficult,” Homa said. “So I know I'm moving in the right direction. I've had some really bad weeks. When we were here two or three weeks ago, I played horrendous, played awful at Pebble, and then last week was finally a massive breakthrough on Monday, Tuesday. Felt like I've been looking for this kind of missing link and I got it.”
There is belief that this week could be the week, and not just what he found. Homa is the only person in the field who’s won both the Farmers Insurance Open and Genesis Invitational. There’s the emotional tie of playing well for his hometown that’s been devasted by wildfires. And there’s the pull all golfers feel, the undercurrent of hope that can’t contain, much as they try.
“I heard that great Jalen Hurts quote where he said, ‘I've had purpose long before anybody had an opinion about it.’ It stuck with me. I don't know how I never heard that, but like two days ago I did, and it just made me realize however the score is looking to those like outward—like last week would never make sense to anybody unless you're part of like my tiny little thing—you would never think that we made progress,” Homa said. “It would look like another kind of red X on the year. I think that that's going to be like a major steppingstone and something we'll all look back on.
“Again, it is difficult, but I do know deep down, like at Nedbank two years ago when I won, it was like, ‘yeah, this is where he's going, it's working right,’ and my swing felt awful. I played great at the Ryder Cup, I made Tour Championship. I could see how people would think like the ascent, everything's easy, but I knew it wasn't. So it's kind of in the inverse. As bad as this has been, I do know that I'm actually going the proper direction now.”
He says it was purpose. He has glimpsed what he's been hunting through the long darkness, as he mentioned repeatedly. And when you've been wandering in golf's shadows for so long, even the faintest glimmer of light becomes something worth protecting.