Few Americans came away from the Ryder Cup with raised stock, but Max Homa was one who certainly did. Pressure putts are part and parcel of any team event, but there was arguably no single putt that carried a greater degree of pressure than Homa’s match-winner over Matt Fitzpatrick that kept US hopes alive.
One of the most personable players in golf, Homa joined the No Laying Up podcast to talk about his experience in Rome, and unsurprisingly, that putt was one of the major talking points.
“Matt missed and I had seven feet,” he explained, “and I remember saying ‘you asked, you wanted this,’ so like, flip the nerves, you’re nervous, but you’re not scared. Like you asked for this exact moment and you’re getting it in the biggest way. But it was just crazy.
“I was basically telling everybody, you dream your whole life, as every single golfer ever has, of making a putt to win the Ryder Cup or making a putt to win the Masters or the US open or whatever; I have never dreamed of making a putt to not lose the Ryder Cup.
“That was a very different feeling. And I had such a good week personally on the golf course but I knew I would be labeled a choker and, and that it just didn’t feel like a fair thing. But I remember I really turned my brain on. You wanted it. This is a very cool opportunity, but I lost full control of my body.
“I can’t believe watching it that you can’t see my legs shaking. I couldn’t feel anything, like my legs were like full blown vibrating. Like I had 50 phones tied to my legs and everyone was calling me.
“It was a wild and I watched it like, like I said last night, I just don’t know how I made it and that mother***ker was right in the goddamn middle. Like it was the best play ever.”
Homa had opted to take an unplayable drop and a one-stroke penalty from a nasty lie beside the greenside bunker, so despite it being his fourth shot on the par-5 finishing hole, it was a putt for par and as he’d go on to explain, those greenside and in the galleries weren’t aware that he’d taken a penalty and, thinking he was getting a free and advantageous drop, some of the crowd were jeering.
“It was funny because I turned to Scottie [Scheffler] and Collin [Morikawa] and I was, I screamed so loud, so loud and Scottie kind of got amped up and Colin was kind of clapping, but they didn’t know I took it unplayable,” he said.
“They thought I got a regular drop, so they thought I had two putts. Scottie said when I hit it, he said ‘slow down, slow down’ and I came up to them after and I was like going crazy.
Scottie said he decided whatever I did, he was gonna match my energy, so he was up. But everybody didn’t seem quite as up as I was, nobody knew, standing next to the green.
“Everybody just assumed the ball was embedded or something. So I didn’t know why they were booing. I didn’t understand anything that was going on and then we got back to 17 and Scottie goes, ‘I had no idea that was for par.’
“So it was the craziest moment, but I’m so thankful that I got to have it and, and obviously I’m extremely grateful that it went in. But yeah, it was that, I don’t know, it was, it was, I had so many experiences that week and then to get to kind of finish my personal performance on the golf course with that was really cool.”
Earlier in the week, in his pre-Ryder Cup Press Conference, Brooks Koepka had made the assertion that very few guys actually wanted to be in the position of having the winning or losing of the Ryder Cup to be in their hands. It was the kind of frank, no ‘BS’ assertion that has become Koepka’s trademark, and his words resonated with Homa.
“Brooks said something really interesting in the press conference “that everybody saw when they [the press] asked ‘who wants the ball?’ Like who truly wants it? Who wants the putt? And he said ‘very few.’
“And I thought about it all week. I was like, man, you know, to him and to everybody in golf, like the people who want the ball are major champions. And I have been absolutely tremendously bad at them for what I think I’m capable of.
“And I was like, I bet you he…, I’m not on his short list of people who want the ball. And if I had to ask myself deep down in the, I think it’s like in your core, like you have to go through, you have to dig.
“I think everybody would say ‘I want that putt,’ And I was like, man, maybe if I dug deep down, maybe I don’t want that. And I thought about it all week. I was like, I wanna be that guy.
“I respect so much of what Brooks does in those majors and obviously Tiger and like my favorite athlete ever, Kobe [Bryant], like clearly that’s in their DNA, they want that win or lose moment.
“And all of a sudden I had a moment where it was like I said, it wasn’t to win, it was to not lose it, which I think is way scarier. And I was just convinced that, like, I’m going to at some point prove that that is who I am.”
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