CHARLOTTE, N.C. — He’s changed coaches, clubs and caddies. Now he’s hoping to change his results.
It’s all been part of a dizzying, sometimes baffling period of frustration and reflection for Max Homa, who played the Masters last month wondering if it would be his last and is now playing the PGA Championship with an eye on the top of the leaderboard.
The six-time PGA Tour winner, who hasn’t had a top-10 finish since the 2024 Masters and went through a five-tournament stretch earlier this year of missed cuts, appears to be clawing his way out of a bad slump. His 64 on Friday during the second round of the PGA Championship was another step.
And all through the process, Homa, 34, has been open and amazingly raw as opposed to shutting it down when it certainly would have been understandable.
“It probably doesn’t help me at all if I’m being honest,” Homa said Friday after completing 36 holes at 137, 5 under par at Quail Hollow, where he was three shots behind leader Jhonattan Vegas. “I grew up a fan of sports, as so many are, and I always found it really ... like interviews and things to be so thought-provoking as a fan to get a little insight.
“Like I said, we are entertainers, and without the fans, we would be just playing golf with the buddies. I just try to be myself. Sometimes I wish I would probably keep some things in, but at the end of the day, we owe a lot to them. It’s not so hard to be transparent. It doesn’t hurt me in any way.”
Homa has said that golf has been toxic at times as he’s sought to work his way out of issues that impacted his game.
Last fall he changed coaches. He said it was a tough decision to leave Mark Blackburn and work with John Scott Rattan. He also switched equipment companies, going from Titleist to Cobra.
“I wouldn’t advise switching your clubs and your coach at the same time, or your golf swing, but I did that,” Homa said.
He also switched caddies, but not by choice. Homa expressed regret that his longtime caddie, Joe Greiner, parted ways with him just a few weeks prior to the Masters.
Greiner filled in on Justin Thomas’s bag for a few weeks and is now working for Collin Morikawa.
With the help of Jim “Bones” Mackay—Phil Mickelson’s longtime caddie who now works for NBC—Homa settled on veteran caddie Bill Harke, who has been working for him the last several tournaments.
“Bill has been awesome. It’s really hard to change caddies,” Homa said. “I was talking to my wife about that last night. You’re in like a full relationship, Day 1. You’re out there with him, first day is probably eight hours. It’s not exactly a normal first date.
“So 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. Bill is really amazing at the psychology of golf and talking to me and keeping me positive when I start to go a little dark. Especially at Augusta this year, he was amazing. I had two rounds where it was because of him what we did.
“Now that I’m playing a bit better the last two weeks, it’s trying to find our rhythm on like clubs and this and that. It’s a learning curve, but I've really enjoyed being around him.”
Homa’s tie for 12th at the Masters was his first solid result in months. It came after missing five straight cuts going back to a tie for 53rd at Pebble Beach. And it was his first top 20 since a tie for 14th at the Nedbank Challenge in South Africa—the last tournament he won in 2023.
But Homa said his play at Augusta National was more “smoke and mirrors” but that he was also well aware that a top-12 finish meant an invite back to the 2026 Masters.
“So Augusta I kind of leaned into what I’ve been doing well, which is the other aspects of the game,” he said. “But it was really nice just because—I mean, especially then it felt like the last major—the last time I might ever play the Masters. So our house knew the 12th number real well.
“I wouldn’t say a confidence booster, but it was just fun, and golf hasn’t been that fun. So it was cool to have a very fun week, to see your name on the leaderboard at Augusta when things have been miserable was awesome.”
Harke, who has caddied for more than a dozen players over a 20-year period, said he just tries to “guide him a little bit. When you’re playing bad and just trying to keep it in play, that’s no way to compete. You’ve got to try and smash it down the fairway and hit it near the hole.
“He’s swinging it great and swinging confidently.”
It doesn’t hurt to have some good fortune, too. At the 340-yard par-4 14th, Homa hit a tee shot that he said was not one he was planning. The ball bounced onto the green and nearly went in for an ace. He settled for a tap-in eagle. He also had six birdies and just one bogey.
It's a 347-yard par 4 and Max Homa did this... #PGAChamp pic.twitter.com/SY0tabOf6a
— PGA Championship (@PGAChampionship) May 16, 2025
He also has good vibes at Quail Hollow, where he got his first PGA Tour win in 2019.
“Yesterday I played awesome,” he said. “I felt like I had really good control. I just couldn’t really get the ball close to the hole, didn’t pull the right club a lot, and had a poor finish.
“It was kind of in a way nice to be able to play in the morning and just get to go immediately because I knew the game was good. Didn’t know I was going to shoot 7 under, but I will take it.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Max Homa Continues to Climb Out of Golf’s Depths at PGA Championship.
