MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 4, 2023

Max Homa

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to be joined here by Max Homa. Max, welcome back to Augusta National.

MAX HOMA: Thank you very much.

THE MODERATOR: Congrats on an amazing win, three years since last year's Masters, and you just moved to No. 5 in the world. What do you think is going to be the key to contending this week, and is there anything different you're doing to prepare?

MAX HOMA: I think the key is probably unique to everybody. I think my key here is I haven't avoided the big numbers well enough. I have probably been too aggressive, not worrying about where I'm leaving it quite as much as hitting a great shot that you see in all the highlight reels that go along with this event.

I don't know if I've changed too much, but this week I've definitely spent more time working on some lag putting and some more time around different spots on the green, picking more people's brains a bit. I played with Justin Thomas yesterday and Jordan today, that helps to be a sponge a bit more.

My game has not been great when I've played here, so it's been hard to take too much from those. My game is in a better spot now, and I don't really have -- in a good way, I don't have scar tissue on this place because it's not like I've felt really good about my game and had bad things happen. I've just played poorly. Hopefully learning from all that.

Q. As far as expectations, it was just mentioned, winning a lot, three wins is a lot. Being fifth in the world, but this is only your 14th major championship start. Having these responsibilities, doing media, does that affect your own expectation of yourself, because your relevancy is higher, and there's almost a borderline referendum on how you play.

MAX HOMA: I mean, this is cool. I get to tell all my friends I get to do this (laughter).

Yeah, it's always a balance. As you start to play better, expectations come up. And expectations, I would imagine for any walk of life, but especially athletics, is kind of the devil. It's like you're not taking the reward of playing well. You start thinking, I have to play well. It's weird, when you're, let's just say, 50th in the world, and you come to a major, if you play great, everyone is like, oh, of course, he's a great player, and if you don't play great, no one notices.

I have a poor record in majors. I've got 13th, finally played a good one last year at the PGA. I put enough pressure on myself. But expectations is something I work on all the time, as far as diminishing it, and this is a great opportunity to continue to could that.

I truly believe that if I don't play well this week, it does not mean I'm not a great golfer, and I've been telling myself that pretty much every week. So as much as I know that this is not just any other event, I also have been practicing, essentially mentally, treating each event the same. And I've had good success, so I don't see why that would not continue to happen.

Yeah, it's definitely a different world when you get to see your name on a press sheet at Augusta National. It's definitely a little bit of a change of pace for me.

Q. You acknowledged a video of yourself a few weeks ago on Twitter doing the AimPoint, said you were going to try to speed the process up. Just wondering how you're trying to speed that up and if you had noticed it was taking a while before that video?

MAX HOMA: Well, it's really not, I think is the first part. I'm going to change up the fact that I turn around a bunch. I noticed I was walking in my own line. I understand that it's just not great to look at, and in the grand scheme of things, I'd like to just make it look like I'm going faster. But if you have somebody go 360 around the hole, it's not fast, but you're used to seeing it. I'm going to change it just for me because I noticed how much I'm stepping around the hole, and I don't love that I do that.

I went and looked at my ShotLink timings, and I am 35 seconds average on putting. That video is 52 seconds. So that's 7 seconds over. So I think it's really easy to jump on that as being incredibly slow when I don't think that that was incredibly slow.

It's also tricky. I hit that putt second, MacKenzie was already in the hole. So I'm not rushing in that sense, but it's not like I had any time to prep for a putt. If you have two people putting at eight feet and seven and a half feet, the guy at seven and a half already has an idea of what they are going to do.

For me looking at that video, I understand this is an entertainment product, I'd like it not to feel you're watching paint dry, and it looked like, when I watched it, it was watching paint dry. Would have been nice if NBC would have clicked away for ten seconds and not made me look awful.

For a second I was thinking think, man, am I slow on the greens? Because I've never considered myself a slow player. I don't have very many timings a year. So I was like, oh -- and it's nice that we have the ability to go back and check that, and I saw that I'm not. That made me feel better about at least the pace.

For me personally, it looked bad and it was -- it just -- the stepping in my own line thing was kind of -- I've been told I do that, but I didn't notice as much until I saw that video.

Q. Cited your major record. Is there something that you feel that you had to add to your game to play better in majors, or as you got better, and majors are how you're defined as a golfer, and you put more pressure on those events because of what they mean to your résumé?

MAX HOMA: I wasn't incredibly well-rounded, I would say, up until last year. I found something in my short game. I've struggled here because I haven't chipped the ball well. I struggle in other majors because it's so firm at whatever course. Similar to here.

Here is different. Even if it's soft, it's hard to chip around here. It's obviously a bit easier. But it's hard. You have to use imagination. You see these great chips. The chip Tiger hit in 2005 that everyone has seen a trillion times, it looks like it's just a feeder chip, right. But if you don't spin that, it runs up the hill and, you know, it's very specific. So you can make a shot look easy around here, and then you can watch somebody, how I used to chip, and you would think it was the hardest shot you've ever seen.

So I think adding some short game, creating spin, playing firmer golf courses better, that has helped me play a bit better in the majors last year. I wasn't, like, stellar, but that's what felt like the difference has been.

So I don't feel like I need to ball-strike at my best to, you know -- those momentum-saving pars in majors are a big deal and not making double around the greens is a big deal, little things like that.

But obviously I'm getting a little bit better every year at all facets. But between my putting and my chipping, I just feel like it had been streaky and been on the right grass, this, that, or whatever, and I feel like this year and last year it's starting to all kind of become more predictable in a way.

Q. Curious, your takeaways from Gordon Sargent, playing with him yesterday and your impressions of his game?

MAX HOMA: Phenomenal golfer. Really nice kid. Hits it 95 miles. He was so far by us it's crazy. Doesn't look like he's going at it that hard. I've heard so many good things about his game. It was probably even more impressive to see him in person.

And so I think he's going to be -- he is an amazing golfer, but he's going to be an amazing professional if and when he decides to do that.

Yeah, it's always fun hearing about these kids and then finally seeing it in action and starting to understand what all the hype is about.

Q. I think when you were winning at Wells Fargo last year, Rory said that's not a guy who should have lost his card ever. You told the story about Tiger saying you should have more wins than you do. Where are you with that belief process in yourself that other players, your competitors, see in your game?

MAX HOMA: It's a work-in-progress. But also, I'm starting to learn that everyone is a work-in-progress, so that's been kind of nice. You play this game, you think you're the only one going through little things, and it's not the case. Everyone has their own battles going on in their head. Confidence is awesome when you have it; when you don't, it feels like it's impossible to get back.

So feeling like I've been on a little more consistent basis, and I've had my setbacks, which has been kind of fun, too. I did a terrible job mentally last tournament in Austin, and it was nice to see myself revert back. It was the first week my game didn't feel pretty good since basically THE TOUR Championship last year, and it was kind of fun to have to address, hey, I haven't solved this, I haven't fixed it.

Confidence comes and goes, but I'm trying to control the things that I can control. That's kind of one of them. All of us, a little bit, if you hit a bad shot, it's not like you can shake it off like it's nothing. But I'm getting a little bit better at that, just like I'm getting better at my putting and my chipping and my irons. It all falls under the same umbrella.

I think did I a poor job of that earlier in my career, and now I'm starting to see how valuable it is to me. It's nice for people like Rory and Tiger to say those things. I'm trying not to shrug those off as they are being nice. I'm trying to use that to build confidence.

Q. I wonder if you can share your thoughts on the changes on 13 on club section?

MAX HOMA: It's going to be interesting this year because of the weather. I almost feel like it's not going to show as much risk/reward as it probably will if the weather was good.

With it being in the 50s and raining and a bit of winds, I'm not sure what direction it's going to be going on that hole. It's not great for my game. I like to cut it with my driver and I can turn my 3-wood, and now there's no 3-wood play.

But it's a much easier tee shot now. I think I'm going to look at it as a three-shot -- yeah, a three-shot par 5, and if I happen to hit a good one down the left center, I'll be able to go for it. But like I said, this year is probably going to be a little bit different. But with everything Augusta has done to their golf course, the changes they have made, they have such great standing in the professionals' view, we know that it's the right decision. It's not like I'm sitting here dissecting the coulda, woulda, shouldas. But this year, I think there's not going to be as many eagle fireworks.

But it's actually a fun hole the way we played it yesterday, walk off the tee and laid it up and you have a pretty fun 50-yard pitch, 40-yard pitch, however really far you want to do it. If you want to chip it all the way up green-side, you can do that. It's just going to be harder to take the shot on to the green now obviously with the creek there.

So I think it will play a bit more benign in the chaos. Scoring average will probably be a little bit similar because part of the older tee is you're bringing a lot of trouble into play for the guys who can hit it up over the corner, and so some of that is enticing.

But you're also going to make eagles up there. So I don't think the scoring average won't be too different but I think you'll be seeing a lot more guys laying up this year simply because of the weather. I think maybe a year we'll get great weather, you'll have a lot more of that in between a 3- and 4-iron; are you going to do it; are you not. I think that's going to be really entertaining.

So yeah, like I said, it's an easier tee shot and might play a little bit more like a three-shot hole, but those pitches short of the green are really fun.

Q. Can you talk about your excitement level when you drive up Magnolia Lane this year, based on your performance this past year? Does it change at all with added confidence and your performance of the past year?

MAX HOMA: Yeah, it's always very exciting to drive up here on Monday morning, or whenever the first day you get here is. It's always exciting.

But it definitely has felt like leading up to this and the excitement around playing so well and coming to uu the Masters with your game intact and not feeling like you're finding something and not feeling like you're doing a whole lot of tinkering, you're just going to go play, that definitely adds a bit of adrenaline to the situation.

I guess, not fun; you always think you come to an event that you can win. But this is kind of the first year I've played this event where I feel like if I do what I've been doing, like, why not. Like why can't I win? Why can't I contend? Whereas the other ones felt like I needed to catch, not quite lightning in a bottle, but something that is slightly fast in a bottle; it felt like that.

Q. You're obviously a golf fan at heart. I'm just wondering how excited you get about big tournaments in realtime. If you go back to last year's Open, do you watch the finish or find yourself emotionally invested in the golf fan?

MAX HOMA: Oh, yeah, I went on vacation with my wife after the British, and we flew home while the final round was going on, which was a bummer. Because when we landed, I saw people were saying it was the greatest golf they've ever seen, and I felt like I missed something as a golf fan. I didn't get to see it.

So yeah, I do like watching. There's some weeks I won't. If I finish play some weeks and I have a sour taste in my mouth, I probably will not watch the end of it.

But yeah, weeks I'm home, I'll probably tune in a little bit, depending on what I'm doing. Yeah, last year after the Masters finished, we all watched -- after I finished, we all watched the final round of the Masters, and being in the moment and watching things go on, like at The Open being with Tiger on Friday and getting to, like, live this thing that will be remembered for so long, is a really cool part of my life that I appreciate.

But yeah, I enjoy -- these majors, I'll never -- I try my best to watch because it is entertaining. Probably the only one I didn't watch much of as of late was the Kiawah one because I played so poorly on the first round, and I really felt good about my game, and it was just, like, hard to watch that event knowing I was nowhere near getting to play the weekend. It was just some of them, you just can't keep living in.

Q. Do you root naturally for your friends or do you take a bigger picture view, like it's good for golf if so-and-so wins? What are your allegiances?

MAX HOMA: I think I'm just a fan. I don't look at it as what is great for golf. I root for the people I'm closest with, or every once in a while there's a great story or maybe somebody I don't know much about and you just kind of get sucked in. I feel like I'm just like everybody else would look at something. You hope Tiger Woods wins if you're not there, and you pick a favorite player after that.

Whenever my friend is contending, at the very least if we don't have a TV, we'll be tuned in to our phone and checking in on their phones and seeing how they are doing and rooting hard for them to play well.

Yeah, I think I'm just like any other golf fan in that.

Q. You're coming here No. 5 in the world, you've had a great year and happy with your form. Would it be fair to also say that you're coming here with a mindset that is going to see you play more conservatively this week?

MAX HOMA: I think there's definitely a balance when you play these very difficult golf courses. Arnold Palmer astutely said, "You need to play boldly the wind." I think you can play boldly 72 holes. But at some point you can play the middle of the greens and play away from flags and keep leaving yourself uphill putts, and playing conservatively.

And then at some point, you have to -- you have a shot, maybe for me at a right pin that looks good and maybe it's not one that everyone goes at but you have to look at yourself and say, you know, I'm really good at this. This is my time to take it on. It feels good, it looks good and it's a good number; let's hit it.

I think in a regular tour week, those happen more often and it's easier to get in that rhythm. Majors, the Masters, it's much more difficult. So those don't happen that often. Feels like when they come up, you almost get that, is this crazy feel. But I do think at some point you have to almost look at yourself in the mirror and say, am I a great golfer, and if you believe so, you look at a shot you hit a million times and you take it on. But I think there's a balance to it.

THE MODERATOR: Max, thanks so much for being here. It's great to have you, and best of luck.