With a final-round 67, Max Homa claimed a three-shot victory over Joel Dahmen at the Wells Fargo Championship.
Homa finished his four rounds at the Quail Hollow Club at 15-under par to secure his first career PGA Tour title. The victory earned the 28-year old Cal Berkeley product $1,422,000, 500 FedExCup points, and 50 Official World Golf Rankings points.
Afterwards, Homa met with the media to discuss his life-changing victory. Here a few pulls from the back and forth.
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LIFE CHANGER
How does it feel to call yourself a PGA TOUR winner and accomplish what you did this week?
MAX HOMA: Yeah, it’s wild. You picture it a lot, you dream of it, and then you get in the moment and you’re not quite sure how you’re going to react to that. It’s a lot of buildup, but as we got going, I started to feel comfortable. I don’t know if I’ve ever been like higher than like 100 on the FedExCup, so to be 35th is awesome. Have some job security is great.
Yeah, I guess my whole world’s a little bit different now.
I know I haven’t had a ton of success out here, but I’ve done some pretty cool things, Walker Cup, National Championship and won a couple Web events and that’s how it always felt and it was cool to feel that even on this stage. Hands felt solid as a rock and the golf swing and putting stroke were as good as I could have imagined it.
WHAT WIN MEANS?
With all the things that came with today — PGA, Masters, the job security, the exemption, the $1.4 million — what amongst all of those things is most important to you at right this moment?
MAX HOMA: I remember we used to take the SAT and there was the “All of the Above” bubble. Can I press that one? They’re all great.
I mean, I like money, but I don’t care too much about it. Become 35th on the FedExCup’s pretty cool. The only goal I had this year was to make it to the Tour Championship, so that’s obviously a big boost there.
What’s crazy is I was actually thinking about getting in the PGA and what that’s going to do for my schedule, but I didn’t even think about the Masters. I don’t know how, it’s my favorite tournament, but I didn’t even think about it until my buddy John Mallinger called me and said, “You’re going to the Masters.” I know Joe’s happier than I am because I told him I would take him to a practice round there.
It’s all pretty cool, man, but I would say moving up that FedExCup’s sweet. The job security’s probably a little sweeter. I know it’s been tough on my family. We don’t know what the heck we’re doing with planning for a year, so that’s probably going to be the one that resonates the most with me.
MOTIVATED BY COLLEGE CONTEMPORARIES LIKE JUSTIN THOMAS?
Touched on this the other day about watching other players, used Justin Thomas as an example. Did you use them as motivation as you watched what he was doing on TV because you were able to compete against him in college, was that at all on your mind?
MAX HOMA: Probably not. It’s always motivating to see anybody win if you’ve played with them, I guess, because it seems a lot more attainable. I assume if you’ve played basketball and you’ve never played against Michael Jordan, it’s kind of hard to imagine that you could ever do something like that.
In this case when Justin plays well, wins a major out here, I could think to myself a little bit, you know, I could probably do this at some stage, got to keep getting better.
Everything’s motivating for me, man. Trying to keep a job, trying to support a family, all of it’s motivation. I’ve always tried to find something to use because I’ve always worked pretty hard and I think I use little things here and there, little goals or just life stuff to kind of keep me going.
Credit: PGA Tour Media, Getty Images