Max Homa will be among the players looking to make an impression at the Memorial Tournament this week but the American has admitted the course has already caught him off guard.
With reports that Rory McIlroy wasn’t happy with Muirfield Village last year and even Jack Nicklaus admitting in 2024 he wasn’t 100% happy, the course at the Memorial is under the spotlight.
Of course, we’ll know more on how the course is playing when the tournament gets underway but for now, we’ll have to take the word of the players in practice rounds.
One of those to get a round in was Max Homa. And according to Homa, there was an element of surprise in the course as he made his way around.
Max Homa gives verdict on the golf course at The Memorial Tournament
Speaking to the press ahead of getting underway on Thursday, Homa was asked about his own thoughts on the course at Muirfield.
And revealing what happened in his practice round, Homa explained how the rough caught him by surprise as he made a comparison to the US Open.
“It is always hard. It does feel like that. It will be interesting to see the scores the next couple days to measure it because the last few years I’ve been here, I feel like it’s just been incredibly firm, and that’s been the test. With such difficult greens, it’s been impossible to leave the ball in a good spot at times,” Homa said.
“But this year, the rough feels like a U.S. Open a bit more. I had a couple lies today that you are just trying to get it 70 yards down the fairway. Then you have to deal with…the greens are still relatively firm. So I’ll be interested to see.
“Usually when it gets – we get rain of some kind it’s soft – it isn’t, it’s a birdie fest. I don’t believe it will be, but you could see somebody, I think, if they drove it really well for a day, you could get hot. I just don’t know if you could do that for four days. But that will be interesting to see.”
Max Homa’s record at The Memorial
Max Homa might not be playing his best golf right now but the 34-year-old is a six-time PGA Tour winner and when it comes to The Memorial, he’s always done pretty well.
In five appearances, Homa has finished inside the top 25 three times, with two of those resulting in top ten finishes.
He missed the cut in 2020 but his worst finish at the event is a T37, while last year he came T22.
Homa will be hoping to show something like he did in 2021 and 2022 though, as he finished T6 and T5 in consecutive years.
With Rory McIlroy out of the equation, Homa will be hoping to be among a group of players who can put Scottie Scheffler under pressure.
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