As Homa prepared to tee it up in the year’s first major this week, he made a guest appearance on Off Course with Claude Harmon to discuss a range of topics. Among them: his specific takeaways from each of his three tour wins.
“Wells Fargo was like, the blackout week. It just worked,” Homa said. “When I missed, it went in the right spot. I putted the best I’ve putted for four days. It was just a blackout. Everything aligned, and I learned that my really good golf is really, really good. I knew, at least, in the back of my mind, that for the rest of my life, my best golf is good enough to beat damn near everybody.”
Homa admitted that having that knowledge still made things hard, because players like Rory McIlroy can play average, and still beat the field — something Homa said he’s not capable of.
“[The Genesis Invitational win] was the biggest difference, and the biggest leap,” Homa said. “When I won that week, my confidence shot through the roof. I knew that I went out there and I just played golf for four days. I didn’t feel like I did anything crazy special, I didn’t feel like there was a part of my game that was clicking like it’s never clicked before. I just played golf.
“That was big,” he continued. “Because ever since that event I’ve walked onto every other driving range since then with an immense amount of ease and confidence. I feel like I have my swagger from college back.”
The win at the Fortinet Championship was gratifying, Homa says, because he was doing what he felt like he was supposed to be doing.
“That first [win] felt like, all right, the stars aligned, everything was great,” Homa said. “The second one felt like, all right buddy, you need to start thinking like this a lot more often, and the third one felt like a product of thinking like that more often.”
As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Issue, which debuted in February 2018. Her original interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.