THE 151ST OPEN

July 23, 2023

Max Homa

Mixed Zone

Q. 2-under for the day, 4-under for the tournament. Happy with the week's work?

MAX HOMA: Yeah. I thought I played really well. Did a lot of good things.

Finally played well in a major. Feels good.

Then today was a battle. I thought 2-under was great, so I'm very proud of the week.

Q. When you have two very different types of weather conditions, one for the first two days and one for today, does it make it great because it's a major championship, or does it make it two different tournaments?

MAX HOMA: It is what it is. It made it great, I guess. I needed it to be as hard as humanly possible today, so I wish the wind would have stayed up. It was fun. We got kind of all of it. We got firm and windy, and then yesterday was pretty benign, and then today was hard.

The wind wasn't up too long, probably after the seventh or eighth hole, but the rain was just annoying as could be.

We kind of got it all, and I think that's what makes these majors so good.

Q. What is the most difficult thing or annoying thing about playing golf in this stuff?

MAX HOMA: The umbrella to the glove to the yardage book to the umbrella, it just gets tiring holding the dang thing and shuffling it around. You just feel very out of sorts.

But if that's the worst part of the day, it's not so bad.

Q. When you do feel out of sorts, how do you park that and get settled into your shot?

MAX HOMA: I think you just get into a routine. It always takes a couple holes to figure out what you're going to have to do. Once you get used to it, you're out there for so long, it just becomes part of the day.

But yeah, I don't know. You just feel like it's almost good, it's almost a trigger right when you're out from under the umbrella. You grab the club and you're kind of ready to go.

Q. You talked earlier this week about trying to play a little bit freer. Do you feel like you did that?

MAX HOMA: Yeah, I felt like I was very committed today. I thought mentally I was great for four days. I felt like I kind of let it go. Yesterday was a little more maybe tentative with the putter, but then today I thought I just let myself putt and made some, missed some, and yeah, I think that's all I can really ask for.

Q. When you reflect back on this major, what do you think some of your big learnings will be from it?

MAX HOMA: I think kind of everything I took from the Friday at LA to basically this whole week. Just lack of commitment issues and trying too hard, I guess, and kind of caring about the outcome instead of just trusting that over the course of 72 holes I'm a very good golfer and I will show that if I let myself.

I think that's what I learned.

Q. Can you believe that the major season is over?

MAX HOMA: Kind of. This has felt like a very long season, so I actually kind of can. But it is always a shame. It's so long until the next one.

Yeah, we've still got our Playoffs next week, or in two weeks, so we still have big things going on. But it's always quite odd when it ends just because it feels like there's so much buzz around it.

But it's nice to play the last one like this. If LA was the last one this would have been a hard one to swallow, but getting to end on kind of my high note was a good feeling going into whatever long break.

I'm sure Shane Bacon knows how long it is until the next major. It's nice to take that into those next bundle of days.