CHARLOTTE – PGA Tour professionals are creatures of habit and don’t really care for change, especially change ahead of a major championship. Max Homa, however, opted for a sweeping overhaul in the runup to the PGA Championship.
Since splitting with longtime swing coach Mark Blackburn last fall, Homa has added a new set of eyes to his team, swing coach John Scott; a new caddie, Bill Harke; and, most recently, a new driver.
“I wouldn’t advise switching your clubs and your coach at the same time, or your golf swing, but I did that,” the always-refreshing Homa said Friday following a 64 at Quail Hollow to move within three strokes of the lead.
Homa came within inches of sinking his tee shot on the drivable par 4 in Round 2 at Quail Hollow.
Homa’s score wasn’t just the low round of the day; it was his lowest round on Tour since Aug. 2023 and his best-ever round in a major by three shots.
Homa’s work with Scott offered an epiphany of sorts about three weeks ago when the six-time Tour winner decided it was time for something different.
“I got more honest with him about what I thought we should do. I said, ‘I think I should swing it like this.’ And he said, ‘OK, show me,’” Homa said. “I showed him. And he said, ‘OK, let’s mold off of that, let’s make that the model.’”
Homa said the reinvented version felt more like his “old golf swing” and this week that familiar action produced a vintage performance. He’s fourth in strokes gained: off the tee and he finds himself in contention for the second consecutive major following a tie for 12th at the Masters.
But this is different.
“It felt a bit like smoke and mirrors,” he said of his Masters performance. “That golf course is rare for us in a season. You can drive it quite poorly if you leave it on the right sides. If you can mentally stay in it and short-game it well, iron it well, and putt it well, you can actually kind of make up for a lot of things.”
The caddie change was prompted when Homa’s former caddie, Joe Greiner, decided it was time to preserve their friendship and end their working relationship (Greiner was eventually hired by Collin Morikawa, with whom Homa was grouped in the first two rounds this week). Homa added Harke to his team but admitted that it takes time to build chemistry.
“I was talking to my wife about that last night. You’re in like a full relationship on Day 1. You’re out there with him, first day is probably eight hours. It’s not exactly a normal first date,” Homa said. “It can be tricky. Joe and I worked for so long and so well together that it’s never going to be exactly like that. We’ve been trying to kind of find our own groove.”
The final piece of Homa’s reworked competitive puzzle was a new driver from Cobra that better fit his new swing.
“We had a driver a little while that was kind of almost playing into the miss better,” he said. “Last week in Philly I was swinging it really well, and then we decided to build a driver that fit my swing better now that we knew this was going to kind of be what we were going to do going forward.
“All of a sudden, a lot of things clicked. I didn’t feel like I was fighting anything.”
There is one notable constant for Homa this week at the PGA Championship. He won the 2019 Truist Championship at Quail Hollow and has finished inside the top 10 in his last two starts in Charlotte.
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