SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

January 8, 2023

Max Homa

Plantation Course at Kapalua

Quick Quotes

Q. How would you assess the week overall?

MAX HOMA: Awesome, really. Played really good golf for four days. Didn't score very well for two of them. Kept my head in it. Been working very hard on the one-shot-at-a-time mantra that I'm tremendously bad at. It's a battle I think for all of us, really. I feel like I honestly put it together in thought from with some help from a woman who's been helping me, Julie, that everyone's going through that. So I always said mental approach to the game is intangible, so it's hard to quantify. And she said, Well, if you keep doing this you're going to see that it is tangible.

So my goal this week was to prove that I can have a good mindset, show that it's tangible and I did a great job. Because through two days I was very frustrated. My game's been feeling awesome at home and it felt awesome through those two rounds. And just to not start comparing myself on the leaderboard and worrying about it, just keep playing golf like I know I can. I got a lot of great things going forward yesterday and then kind of just kept the momentum. So I was very proud of the whole week, but especially that Thursday, Friday not playing myself out of kind of contention, if you will.

Q. Why do you feel like it's so hard for you with the maybe the mental side of that?

MAX HOMA: A billion reasons. This game's tough, man. There's a number at the end of the week that tells you how good you are and tells the world how good you are. In basketball we're arguing whether LeBron is better than Michael Jordan, which is a waste of time and who knows, you know.

But there's a number that tells us how good we are and I struggle with that because I'm probably too worried about what other people think instead of just going out and playing golf like I can play golf.

So putting some confidence in, Hey, if I do my thing, my golf game's real good and that will lead to a lower number next to my name. So I think a lot of guys struggle with that out here. I just think that it's one of those untalked about things because it's personal.

Q. How much confidence do you take on that side of things and your golf game going forward after this week?

MAX HOMA: I think the fun part of this week was I was just, I didn't try to do anything. My game's been real good for like a year, year and a half. Sometimes I forget that and get to an event and something feels a little bit off and I get, start pressing. So it was fun this week to have more mental goals and trust the golf. So it was just successful in what I wanted to do this week, regardless of result, it was a very successful week because I felt like I learned I can do better in some areas, but I learned a lot and I thought my application of what I've been working on was good.