Who-ma? No, It’s Max Homa — Your Newest PGA Tour Winner

The first thing you need to know about Max Homa is that there is a small tatoo on his right forearm, close to his wrist, it reads:

Relentless.

“It’s always been my favorite word,” says 28-year-old Max Homa, the PGA Tour’s newest winner — newest first-time winner.

And what a win it was on Sunday at tougher-than-tough Quail Hollow with world-class players Justin Rose and Rory McIlroy on his heels heading into the final 18 holes.

You’d figure that would make things pretty uncomfortable for a guy ranked 417th in the world, who a couple of years ago, wasn’t even inside the top 1,000 in the world.

Then take into consideration that Max missed the cut in four of the five fall cross-over events.  If that’s not bad enough, he missed the cut at the Valspar, Sony and Desert Classic.  And yes, he missed the cut in the team play last week in New Orleans.  So maybe the last guy anyone would pick to win at Quail Hollow would be the 28-year-old who actually won the NCAA individual title back in 2013 but that was light years from the tussle he was in this past week.

For a guy with conditional status, he was up against the big boys and on Sunday, he made them look small and made you wonder where the guy who closed with a 67 and shot an impressive 15-under par has been hiding the last few years.

Remember that word “relentless.”

“When I played very, very bad two years ago,” Homa explained earlier in the week, “I just kept thinking about that word. I knew I was going to be back out here and I was going to make myself get back out here, and that’s when my attitude changed. You’ve kind of got to love yourself a little bit more. Everybody else probably will be surprised but I was kind of waiting for this to happen.”

Goodness did it happen.

First, McIlroy fell apart in a big way.  He was in the thick of it until he hit the par five seventh in two and proceeded to three-putt from 21 feet. “Incomprehensible,” was the reaction from the voice of CBS — Jim Nance.  Even more incomprehensible was McIlroy’s poor chip on the drive-able eighth that resulted in a par where the contenders were making birdies.  McIlroy then three-putted again for bogey at the ninth.  And if that wasn’t incomprehensible enough, Rory-boy threw in a double-bogey at the par-five 10th and if he had a corner-man, he might have thrown in the towel.  But it was the end of Rory’s day for all intents and purposes.

That left unheralded but improving Joel Dahmen and Rose to lead the chase.  But there wasn’t much of a chase thanks to play by Homa that was nothing short of special.

All the 28-year-old Californian did was shoot a steady two-under on the front, despite missing a couple of short birdie putts.  Then he really went to work with birdies at 10 and 11 to put the pressure on Rose and Dahmen.  Dahmen went so far as to get rid of his cap at the turn and throw on his trademark bucket hat.  Rose, after a birdie at 10, couldn’t find another coming home.

After some great par saves at 13 and 14, Homa hit two solid shots into the par five 15th, two-putted from 65 feet for birdie and built a four-shot lead.  At that point, he put it in cruise control.

Homa had a lot of help and encouragement from hipster caddie Joe Greiner, who was Kevin Chappell’s looper before Chappell was forced out of action to have back surgery.

A solid putter didn’t hurt either.  Homa made just one bogey all day and that didn’t come until the 16th when he hit a fairway bunker, laid up 50 yards short of the green then pitched to 15 feet.  Avoid the big number.  A sweet up-and-down at 17 then an impressive two-putt at 18 closed it all out.

Relentless.

“Over the moon,” was how Homa described it right after he picked that par putt out of the cup.

“It feels great to do this under pressure.”

And consider he held up while the No. 4 player in the world wilted.

Homa’s been through the golf-wringer.  “I have some scar tissue,” he quickly admitted.

Yeah, he’s got that, but what he also has now is some job security.

“And job security is good,” he concluded.

Understatement of the week.

Final Wells Fargo Scoreboard: