What Has Happened to Max Homa?

The most fascinating score in Friday’s second round of the Palmer Invitation was not at the top of the leaderboard but below the cutline.

Former Cal golfer Max Homa, one of the most popular players on the PGA Tour, has been in the grip of a horrible slump through the first two months of 2025. It caused his world ranking to drop precipitously and he has abandoned his popular Twitter activity.

His 9-over-par 81 in the first round of this week’s event in Orlando, Florida, suggested the slump’s hold on Homa was getting even tighter, and his chances of qualifying for two majors this year were disappearing.

Heading into Friday he was in 71st place in a 72-player event, miles from the projected cutline, and we were set to report on Homa’s stunning disappearance from PGA relevancy.

Then suddenly, early Friday morning, the slump sky briefly cleared for Home, who had two birdies and an eagle on the front nine, putting him at 4-under for the round and within reach of making the cut.

Can a golfer be stuck in a two-month nightmare and suddenly wake up in dreamland?

But thoughts that the downturn was ending disappeared on the back nine. Homa had a double-bogey on No. 10 and a bogey on No. 11, and he went 2-over-par on the final nine holes.

His 2-under-par round of 70 may have provided some hope, but the 7-over-par two-round score left him three strokes off the projected cut line of 4-over.

It’s Homa’s third straight event in which he missed the cut.

His first five events of 2025 have gone like this: Homa withdrew from his first tournament of the year after shooting 9-over for the first two rounds, then he finished tied for 53rd in his second event, and  missed the cut in his next three tournaments, shooting 7-over in all three.

In mid-February Homa told Golf Digest, “Golf doesn’t like me at the moment.” And Homa’s sport is still not on speaking terms with him through the next three weeks.  Did golf and Homa patch things up for nine holes on Friday, only to have another falling out on the back nine?

His world ranking has slipped to No. 66, which figures to slide even further after his finish this week – a steep descent after being ranked No. 5 in April 2023.  After finishing tied for third in the Masters last April, the only question facing Homa was this: When will Homa win a major?

Now Homa is in danger of not even being eligible for two of the majors in 2025. Homa must be ranked among the top 60 golfers in the world to qualify for the U.S. Open in June, and he must be among the top 50 to play in The Open in Northern Ireland in July.

We feel his pain, because Homa is a fan favorite.  His honest, self-effacing and often humorous comments made him an accessible star, and his clever and often insightful daily Twitter posts about golf and any other subject made him the undisputed social-media king of the PGA Tour.

Then his tweets stopped.  His last Twitter message was posted on February 3, so he was asked this week after his TGL match whether he would resume tweeting. Homa told journalists this:

"No, I think I finally had a come-to-Jesus moment that it's for the sick. I was sick. I'm just trying to get healthy now. No, I have not enjoyed that app. It's not very fun. It's fun to watch our little highlights or lowlights, and that stuff is fun. The rest of it's probably not great, so I'm going to stick to TikTok."

Whether that’s a reaction to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (or X) or a response to the fact that Homa has had only one top-10 finish in his last 18 tour events is unclear.

But his Twitter presence is missed.

Homa is one of the rare pro athletes willing to reveal himself to the public. That, and his sudden, rapid rise to elite status during his 30s after toiling in anonymity for years on the Tour, make him the Everyman player that virtually every man cheered for.

The best example of Homa’s appeal came in his final college competition as a senior at Cal. On June 1, 2013, one day after Homa had won the NCAA individual championship, he lost in a playoff in the deciding match of the national team championship, costing the Bears the NCAA team title.

Homa stood up to every post-match question, but he was crying through much of it, thinking he had let down his team and his family, saying he would put his individual win in a grinder if he could swap it for a team victory.