CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Over the last 12 months, Max Homa has changed nearly everything he could about his golfing life.
As he walks the fairways at Quail Hollow Country Club this week - a venue where he won the Wells Fargo Invitational in 2019 - his longtime friend and caddie Joe Greiner is no longer by his side. His new caddie, Bill Harke, is now carrying his bag, one that is full of brand-new golf clubs after Homa switched equipment and apparel sponsors in the offseason. Homa also swapped swing coaches, going from Mark Blackburn to John Scott Rattan.
"I wouldn't advise switching your clubs and your coach at the same time, or your golf swing," Homa said Friday. "But I did that."
All these changes have coincided with one of the worst stretches of Homa's career. Since he finished eighth at last year's Masters, Homa has been in a stark decline, missing five straight cuts this season and searching for a swing that could get him back to form.
"I've hit a lot of golf balls in the last seven months, like an absurd amount of golf balls," Homa said. "It's been hard. I feel like I was playing with a foreign swing at times."
Through it all, Homa has remained adamant that he's playing better than his scores are reflecting and on Friday in the second round of the PGA Championship, Homa found his best round since the 2023 BMW Championship and his lowest round at a major, shooting a 7-under 64 to vault himself into contention.
This did not entirely come out of nowhere. Homa once again looked comfortable at Augusta this year, where he finished in a tie for 12th, but he did follow it up by beating only one golfer in a 70-man field at the RBC Heritage. Last week at the Truist Championship, Homa said he played as good as he has in recent memory and finished in a tie for 30th.
"It's been difficult because I felt like I was so broken," Homa said. "[My wife] will ask me on days at home, like 'how was today?' I'll say 'great,' and we'll leave the next day and I'll shoot a zillion. It has been hard to explain. It didn't feel mental. It just was a little bit of mental with a lack of confidence mixed with a golf swing that wasn't super repeatable."
According to Homa, the breakthrough was not about one single fix, but rather a combination of things as well as some commitment to the process. First, he decided to tell Rattan how he "felt" his swing should be, one that resembled his old swing from the 2022-23 season that featured two wins. Homa then worked with Cobra, his new equipment sponsor, on a driver setup that fit that swing better. In short, the updated driver is setup to go left which allows Homa to swing his fade freely and also swing faster, giving him an extra few miles of ball speed.
"It's been fast, but there's been something stuck in the golf swing, or I've been stuck in the golf swing. So I haven't been able to let it go," Homa said. "All of a sudden, a lot of things clicked, I didn't feel like I was fighting anything so I think that's where the speed jumped."
It all appeared to coalesce perfectly on Friday as Homa came out firing, shooting 30 on the front nine thanks to four birdies and an eagle after he drove the par-4 14th green and left himself a tap-in. At the time he finished his round, he had jumped 70 spots up to third place and he was leading the field in strokes gained: driving on the day, third overall for the tournament.
As he walked off the 18th hole and toward the scoring area, Homa sported something he hasn't been able to show after a competitive round in a while: a smile.
"When you're in a rut, you got to go through that point first, right? You got to start admitting to yourself that you're getting better and then you can take the next step to being better," Harke said. "So it's like everybody's telling him he's close for months now and he's got to tell himself that. A round like today is the type of round that he's going to take to heart and hopefully realize that he is back."
Whether Homa can repeat Friday's performance remains to be seen. He, more than most, has felt the natural volatility of the game recently as well as the fact that a swing that feels good doesn't automatically translate into good scoring.
But for a player who said as recently as three months ago that golf "did not like him" and who has described his relationship with the sport as "toxic", a round like Friday's is not just a welcome development but also validation for the work he has put in. It helps, too, that it's happening at Quail Hollow, where Homa has had success before.
"As I've started to feel really good, I knew I was going to come in here and swing it nicely," Homa said. "I just needed to find some comfort. This place does that for me."
