HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA | As Max Homa was making his way from the Masters to the RBC Heritage on Monday, a 2½-hour drive that seems to start in one fever-dream dimension and end in another moss-draped dimension, he pulled into a drive-thru line at Chick-fil-A for lunch.
Homa was hungry and went deep with his order, getting a chicken sandwich, 12 chicken nuggets, an order of waffle fries and sweet tea.
When it came time to pay, Homa found out that a woman in the adjacent drive-thru line had paid it forward.
“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,” said Homa, who thanked the woman while they waited to pick up their food.
“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.”
It didn’t matter that Homa had won $1.04 million with his tie for third at Augusta National. It was another example of Homa’s popularity, built as much or more on his personality as his golf.
While Scottie Scheffler won his second green jacket in three years and further separated himself from everyone else in professional golf, Homa may have been the emotional favorite through the weekend as he posted his best finish in a major championship.
“I had never been in a position of being in contention going into a Sunday – a Saturday, any of those days really. 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 …” – Max Homa
Homa, a 33-year-old Californian, goes through life with a twinkle in his eye, and it radiates. He finds humor where others might not and, having come back from golf’s version of the dark side of the moon, his perspective is both enlightening and endearing.
On the drive through South Carolina’s backroads to Hilton Head, Homa talked with friends and, when cellphone service faltered, he thought back to what he did and how it felt to be in contention on a Masters weekend.
“I had never been in a position of being in contention going into a Sunday – a Saturday, any of those days really. 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,” Homa said.
“Just a lot of good stuff to take from last week, and just in general what a memory. If I never play another golf tournament, it’s pretty cool to have that seared into my brain.”
Homa clearly remembers making the uphill walk from the 11th green to the 12th tee Sunday. At that moment, he was one stroke behind Scheffler and, despite the smothering pressure, Homa felt something else.
“I was very aware on the weekend to smile. [Caddie] Joe [Greiner] kept reminding me this is the most fun we’ve ever had. Appreciate that and then get back to work,” Homa said.
“I tried every day to walk up to that 12th tee with my eyes up and look around and scan the crowd. I got basically like a standing ovation walking to that tee, and I just tried to stare at it as long as I could and enjoy it.”
There are swings Homa would like to have back. He’s still bothered that he didn’t trust himself to commit to his wedge shot into the seventh green on Saturday to the spot he picked out.
Ultimately, Homa would finish seven shots behind Scheffler but he hung in until the end, managing just his second top-10 finish in 18 major-championship starts.
He also bailed out on his tee shot on the par-5 13th hole on Sunday – “I just made the double, so I’m going to give myself a little grace. My brain was kind of moving fast,” Homa said – and consequently could not go for the green in two.
An unfortunate bounce on the par-3 12th when his tee shot skipped into ivy behind the green spoiled Homa’s chances, and it didn’t help, he said, that he did not make a putt longer than 12 feet over the final two rounds.
Ultimately, Homa would finish seven shots behind Scheffler, but he hung in until the end, managing just his second top-10 finish in 18 major-championship starts. He shared the 36-hole lead with Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau after playing the first two rounds with Tiger Woods.
“I guess it reinforces that my golf game is good enough,” said Homa, a six-time winner on the PGA Tour who ranks No. 9 in the world.
“I did absolutely nothing special on the weekend and had a very good chance, minus a bad bounce on the 12th.”
This week is the antithesis in many ways of last week. Augusta National is big, wide and sloping. Harbour Town is relatively short, tight and flat. The decompression from last week to this week is almost audible.
However, Scheffler is here, chasing his fourth win in five starts, it’s a $20 million signature event and the field is limited to 69 players.
Homa got back to the business of golf Tuesday night during a Player Advisory Council meeting that included representatives from the Strategic Sports Group, which recently agreed to invest up to $3 billion in the new for-profit PGA Tour Enterprises. Without spilling any secrets, Homa said: “There’s light at the end of this tunnel for the golf fans.”
Unless Scheffler’s wife, Meredith, goes into labor early, the world No. 1 looms like the red-and-white-striped lighthouse standing sentinel behind Harbour Town’s 18th green. Homa is ready to try again.
“The beauty of this is you want to beat the best when they’re at their best,” he said. “It’s fun, and it’s hard.”
Something else to chew on.
Top Photo: Chris Turvey, Augusta National
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