The Golden Boy Who Almost Wasn’t

Max Homa’s journey through professional golf reads like a screenplay that Hollywood would reject for being too dramatic. Here’s a guy who won the NCAA individual championship at Cal Berkeley, turned pro with all the promise in the world, then promptly made just $18,008 in an entire PGA Tour season. That’s not a typo. In 2017, Homa was so far from relevance that he joked on Twitter about caddies wanting to work with him because “they heard they usually get weekends off.”

But that’s the thing about golf, and about Homa specifically—the game has a way of humbling you just when you think you’ve got it figured out, and then surprising you when you least expect it. What followed that disastrous 2017 season was one of the most remarkable turnarounds in recent Tour history. By 2019, Homa had captured his first PGA Tour victory at the Wells Fargo Championship, earning $1.422 million in a single week after years of scraping by.

The Meteoric Rise

From 2019 to 2023, Max Homa became everything golf fans love about the modern game. He was relatable, funny on social media, and genuinely seemed to enjoy what he was doing. More importantly, he was winning. Six PGA Tour victories, including back-to-back wins at the Fortinet Championship. A tie for third at the 2024 Masters. A climb to fifth in the world rankings.

Homa represented something special in professional golf—a player who had genuinely struggled, who understood what it meant to fail, and who never forgot where he came from. When he won, it felt earned in a way that’s rare in professional sports. He wasn’t just talented; he was resilient, thoughtful, and authentic in an era where those qualities can feel manufactured.

When Everything Falls Apart

But professional golf is perhaps the cruelest of all sports. It’s a game where confidence can evaporate overnight, where muscle memory can betray you without warning, and where the difference between contending and missing cuts can be measured in millimeters and milliseconds. Over the past year, Homa has lived this reality in the most public way possible.

The struggles began subtly, then cascaded into something more serious. Equipment changes, coaching changes, and most painfully, the end of his partnership with childhood friend and longtime caddie Joe Greiner. When a player starts changing everything—clubs, coaches, caddies—it’s usually a sign that the foundation has shifted beneath them. Homa has been brutally honest about feeling “broken” and describing his relationship with golf as “toxic.”

Missing five straight cuts this season would be devastating for any professional golfer, but for someone who had climbed as high as Homa had, it must have felt like falling from a mountain. The game that had given him everything was suddenly taking it all back, one missed cut at a time.

Signs of Life

Yet even in his darkest moments, there have been glimpses of the player we know Homa can be. His tie for 12th at this year’s Masters showed that the talent hasn’t disappeared—it’s just been buried under layers of doubt and mechanical confusion. His recent second round 64 at the PGA Championship, vaulting him into contention with his lowest major championship round ever, felt like watching someone remember who they used to be.

These moments matter more than the statistics suggest. In golf, confidence is everything, and confidence often comes from a single shot, a single round, or a single moment when everything clicks back into place. For Homa, that 64 at Quail Hollow—a place where he’s won before—might be exactly what he needed.

The Rebound That’s Coming

Here’s what I believe about Max Homa: he’s too good, too smart, and too determined to stay down. The same qualities that got him through those early struggles—the self-awareness, the work ethic, the ability to laugh at himself while still taking the game seriously—are still there. They’re just temporarily obscured by the fog of a slump.

Professional golf has a way of rewarding persistence, and Homa has shown throughout his career that he knows how to persist. The equipment changes will settle in. The new swing thoughts will become automatic. The confidence will return, probably when he least expects it.

When Homa does break through again—and he will—it’s going to mean something special. Not just because he’s a talented golfer, but because he represents something we all need to see: that it’s possible to fall down, get back up, and be better than you were before. In a sport that can be unforgivingly cruel, Max Homa’s comeback story is going to be one worth celebrating.

PGA Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer. You can check out his writing work and learn more about him by visiting BEAGOLFER.golf and OneMoreRollGolf.com. Each Monday, check out his regular column “The Starter” on RG.org. 

Editor’s note: “My Take” is an ongoing series where Brendon shares his thoughts and opinions on various aspects of the game and industry. These are Brendon’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of GolfWRX, its staff, and its affiliates.