If you are Max Homa right now, you are a player very much battling with different elements of your game as you plot a way back towards the upper echelons of the game.
Still very much a big name on the PGA Tour, Homa’s results over the last 18 months have been nowhere near the level of a player many considered a lock for Ryder Cups for years to come.
Homa hasn’t won on the PGA Tour since 2023 and prior to this year’s Masters, he’d missed five consecutive cuts, with his best result in 2025 so far being a T26 at the season opener in Hawaii.
However, a T12 at The Masters has given Homa hope he can come back to life, and after finishing T3 back in the 2024 Masters, he knows he can play well around Augusta National.
Still, that third in 2024 stings a bit and according to Homa, it is in the final round of that tournament where he’d love to retake a shot.
Max Homa names the shot he’d have back if he could
Every player in golf will have a shot they wished they could go back to. Whether it be Rory McIlroy at the US Open in 2024 finding the rough off the tee, or Jordan Spieth when he had his own Masters meltdown to allow Danny Willet to in.
For Max Homa, his ‘mulligan’ would also come at Augusta, as he explained to Dan Rapaport how his shot at 12 in the 2024 event would be his pick.
“Erm…I’m aiming straight at the pin on 12 at Augusta in 2024. Tried to do the smart thing and got the worst bounce I had in my entire career so wish I’d just tried to make it,” Homa admitted.
Homa’s effort on 12 saw him hit the green but the bounce sent the ball flying into a bush.
After finding his ball, he had to take an unplayable before making double bogey, moving him four shots behind Scottie Scheffler and basically ending his hopes of a first major.
What Max Homa said at the time about his unlucky shot on the 12th at Augusta National
To see his ball fly towards the 12th green and look such a solid shot before careering off into the bushes was the stuff off heartbreak for Max Homa.
In fact, he’s arguably never recovered and his performances since show it.
At the time, Homa said it just felt unfair.
“The honest answer is, it didn’t feel fair. I hit a really good golf shot, and it didn’t feel fair. I’ve seen far worse just roll back down the hill,” he said. The professional answer is, these things happen,” Homa said at the time.
“It’s bittersweet, I guess, because I feel accomplished but I feel like it doesn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things. But I just feel like I learned. I feel like I took a big leap,” he added of his third place finish.
“The rhetoric on me, and this is from myself, as well, is I have not performed in [majors], and I performed for all four days. I didn’t throw a 65 in there and sneak my way in. I had to sleep on this every single day, this feeling and kind of this monkey on my back. For me, I think it’ll change some things, and then in other ways it’ll change nothing at all.”
With Homa yet to rekindle any sort of form since that shot, it does look like it’s affected his game more than he’d like.
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