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Here’s why Max Homa started roasting his Twitter followers’ golf swings

January 1, 2020

KAPALUA, Hawaii — In the wake of the Presidents Cup, a fiery debate broke out on golf Twitter. On one side was “old media,” on the other “new media,” courtesy of a spat between Barstool Sports’ golf personalities and several seasoned, respected golf writers.

If ever golf Twitter needed some comic relief, this was the moment.

Enter 29-year-old PGA Tour winner Max Homa.

Two days after the Presidents Cup, Twitter user Bryan McLaughlin asked Homa to “critique my swing like Gordon Ramsay critiques sh-tty food. I think this could become a hilarious trend.”

Boy, was McLaughlin right.

Homa, who has one of the quickest and quirkiest wits among Tour pros (at least on social media), was at 30,000 feet on his way home to Southern California when he heeded the call. He roasted one swing, then another. And another. And another. The more swings that Homa light-heartedly ripped — from both amateurs and professionals alike — the more requests that flooded into his feed. Homa has shown no mercy.

It needed to be asked — had Homa downed a couple of beers when he began his critiques?

“No, I did that all very sober,” he said with a smile Tuesday at the Tournament of Champions on Maui, Hawaii. “My brain’s messed up. It’s a beautiful disaster.”

Homa credits his roasting rampage to celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who uses Twitter to hilariously insult dishes cooked and photographed by fans. Ramsay once wrote that a fan’s beef dish was “so raw it is still running around the field.”

“Somebody else tweeted at me and said, ‘Roast my golf swing like you’re Gordon Ramsay,’ so he gets all the credit,” Homa said of Ramsay. “I didn’t know people were going to like me doing it this much.”

Homa said mostly his swing reviews were a fun way to pass time over the holidays.

“To be able to have banter and joke around, people took it really well and didn’t get too offended,” he said. “I wasn’t meaning any harm trying to be funny and do what people were asking me to do.

“When I had some downtime I’d sit on the couch and do it for an hour or so.”

Jokes aside, Homa now turns his attention to the winner’s-only Tournament of Champions at the Plantation course at Kapalua. He is eligible courtesy of his maiden PGA Tour victory at the 2019 Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow. The world No. 130 has been impressed by the Coore/Crenshaw layout which boasts stunning ocean views and a wildly undulating layout. The Plantation underwent a refinement under Coore and Crenshaw’s watch after last year’s Tournament of Champions.

“What a beautiful golf course,” Homa said. “It’s a lot harder than I anticipated. The fairways are quite soft so it’s playing pretty long.”

Here’s hoping Homa’s swing is in good form, or he might just find himself on the other side of a roasting.

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