LAHAINA, Hawaii — The black pants are now Lululemon. As is the pinkish-red shirt. The shoes are now white Pumas. The hat is now a plain black one with a wide white Cobra logo across the front. The clubs are from Cobra, with a custom-made set put together in mere weeks. There’s someone new helping him with his swing.
Oh, and at this moment walking the steep cliffs of Maui, Max Homa’s bag is being carried by the large, bearded caddie, Michael Greller, best known for helping Jordan Spieth win three major titles.
OK, the caddie is just temporary for a few weeks. But this is a new-look Max Homa in a new year. He turned 34 in November. He’s one of the most popular and public-facing stars in the sport. But he also just finished a deflating, taxing season that left him unsure he even deserved a Presidents Cup pick. So as midnight hit to enter 2025, Homa could finally announce all the ways his entire golf ecosystem is changing as the PGA Tour season opens in Hawaii.
He’s switched from Titlelist clubs to Cobra. From Footjoy apparel to Lululemon, becoming just the second golfer to join the brand’s new golf initiative. After much of his rise came working with Mark Blackburn the last four years, they split in August. He now works with John Scott Ratton from Congressional Country Club. There’s more changes to be announced soon.
It’s natural to look at this seismic set of changes in Homa’s golf life and assume he looked at his troubled 2024 season — zero wins, three top-10s and six top-20s in 22 starts — and assume Homa decided to cut bait and change everything after spending his entire 11-year career with Footjoy and Titlelist. In reality, it wasn’t that complicated.
“None of it happened in like sequential order,” Homa joked. “It just all kind of happened.”
It’s true. He had ended things with Blackburn well before any other changes were planned. His Footjoy deal was up at the end of the year. And he still uses a Titlelist Pro V1x ball, so it’s not like he dropped Titlelist altogether. But Homa understands how it looks, the drastic nature of how things changed. He keeps repeating it’s not a “reset” as if he changed his entire swing or cut out his team. At the same time, he feels rejuvenated playing this week in Kapalua. In a professional world where players often call it “Groundhog Day” from the monotony — fly in, practice, pro-am, tournament, fly out, repeat — things suddenly feel fresh.
“It has made things more chaotic but also, in a weird way, simpler because if everything is different none of it’s different,’” he said.
New clubs, new gear, new year for @Maxhoma pic.twitter.com/R2Ny27cA8I
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) January 1, 2025
Why the changes, though? Well, for the most part, you can separate Homa’s last 11 years into two separate careers. During the first five years out of Cal, he bounced back and forth between the Korn Ferry Tour and struggling on the PGA Tour. Then there were the last six years where he slowly but surely won big-name tournaments, made it on three U.S. cup teams and became a top-tier name in the sport. He finished 2023 as the lone U.S. star standout at the Ryder Cup and a clear top-10 player. Big things to come, right?
Nope. After a T3 at the Masters felt like another sign of what was just around the corner, everything declined. His driver went from a strength to a weakness, losing strokes off the tee for the first time in seven years. In turn, his iron play took a slight dip, and his putting fell off drastically.
Golf became miserable. “Just been really not playing very well and golf has not been very fun,” he said at the Open Championship, moments after a rare bit of joy. He sunk a lengthy putt at Royal Troon to make the cut. He lost it. Running around and shouting like he won the tournament. Something finally went right. He was simply happy and said it was the first time he’d felt that on a course in months. Not because of what it meant for something larger. Simply because he was happy to play two more rounds at his favorite major.
“Expectation is a hell of a drug, and it’s just been getting to me,” Homa vulnerably said that day in Scotland.
Still, it was an isolated event. He kept trying different things, and the lack of results only deflated him more. He told the PGA Tour he decided to eat at the course more so he wouldn’t bring bad energy home to his wife and kid. Wednesday, he told The Athletic, “I just care a lot. I feel like I work really, really hard. So when you don’t see any progress, it sucks. You think I guess I could have just sat on my butt.”
He arrived in Maui looking so different. Lululemon feels like the most Homa brand possible, a chill, comfortable yoga brand outfitting the likeable, cool Southern California kid. And the marriage with Cobra came from a desire to find clubs that got the most out of his game. It was performance-based. He wanted to work with Cobra’s well-respected tour operations manager Ben Schomin and see what Cobra, who helped Bryson DeChambeau push futuristic club advancements before DeChambeau and Cobra split at the end of 2022, can do for him.
“It’s not like I did this just because I wanted to do it,” Homa told Golf Digest. “I like playing good golf more than anything, outside of being with my family. I like playing good golf more than any amount of money. I like playing good golf more than damn near anything in my whole life. I did my due diligence.”
Sure, there’s a financial incentive. Cobra’s playing roster was in transition — DeChambeau is gone, Lexi Thomson is semi-retired, and Rickie Fowler is not who he once was. They needed Homa even more than he needed them. And Lululemon could mean more broad exposure than Footjoy, even if it’s not as well known for golf yet.
Michael Greller is filling in on Max Homa’s bag this week at The Sentry. (Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
Ironically the one part of his golf world Homa hasn’t changed is the one getting the most attention this week in Hawaii. He’s still working with his longtime caddie Joe Greiner, his lifelong best friend, who is taking a few weeks off to deal with personal matters.
It’s just meant Greller is on his bag, making it one of the more interesting stories in a sleepy week. Greller is one of the most famous caddies in the game, the man keeping a stoic, unaffected face as Spieth rants at himself and gets into his another of his beloved shenanigans. Spieth isn’t in the Sentry field and is recovering from wrist surgery, so it made sense for Greller to fill in for Greiner.
Still, one couldn’t help but notice Greller and Homa laughing and talking nonstop through Thursday’s round, as Homa shot a first-round 69 to end the day five back of leader Tom Hoge. It was a different Greller we normally see, surely able to just have fun in a temporary gig with a playful player who isn’t his real boss.
And sure, seeing Homa joke around on a golf course might feel normal, but to understand Homa’s last 12 months is to understand he hasn’t been this way all the time. He thinks he’s returning to that joy. In part because of the external changes. Even more so, it’s because of the changes he’s made for himself. The question is if it will lead us to a better Max Homa.
“I was letting the season get to me worse and worse,” he said, “to where — maybe reset isn’t the word — but just restarting to say, ‘This is a brand new year.’”
(Top photo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
