Weekly Recap: Max Value

Max Homa is a real enigma.

He's won four times on Tour, with his latest victory coming on Sunday at the Wells Fargo Championship, so he's obviously very good. Three of those wins have come in the past 16 months -- more than Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson, Xander Schauffele and Brooks Koepka.

Most of those guys are top-10 in the world rankings and all of them are top-16. Homa is 29th, and he needed Sunday's win just to crack the top 30 for the first time.

It's really, really hard to win three times on Tour in such a short period of time and not even crack the top25 in the world.

How can you explain that?

Very few good weeks. A lot of bad weeks. Inconsistency.

Over that 16-month period, beginning with his victory over an elite field at the 2021 Genesis Invitational, Homa recorded only seven top-10s -- the three wins, two T10s and two T6s. That's right, his only top-5s have been wins.

He has more bad weeks than most of the top players, more missed cuts than most of the top players.

And Homa has a terrible record in the majors. Since the start of 2020, he ha missed the cut in six of eight. His best finish has been 40th. He was just 48th at the Masters.

All that said, there's a good chance those seven other guys listed above would trade their past 15 months for Homa's in a heartbeat. He has won more, and wins are what matters most in the minds of most golfers. Well, let's check that. Rahm wouldn't trade. He won the U.S. Open last year. Major wins matter most. Okay, and maybe Schauffele wouldn't trade because he won a gold medal. Maybe that doesn't even belong in the conversation, but we know some of you are thinking that!

It's really confounding why Homa has so many bad weeks, because he's so sound in every facet of golf. He's ranked top-30 in every Strokes Gained category outside of Around-the-Green. He's a real Swiss Army Knife with that kind of game in that his skills translate to just about every course out there, short or long. He's won in some loaded fields at hard tracks in Quail Hollow and Riviera, but also was victorious at a bit of a birdie-fest at Silverado to start off the 2021-22 season. The Wells Fargo Championship didn't have the strongest field, but TPC Potomac was a brute across four days, with Homa's winning score a mere 8-under-par.

Look, Homa is clearly a very good. And also clearly, Homa is aware that he needs to do better week in and week out and far better in the majors if he really wants to be in the conversation with all those greats, not to mention Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay and some others.

He'll have his chance to join that conversation in less than two weeks when the PGA Championship will be played at big, bad Southern Hills.

We know some of the biggest names in golf will be on the first page of the leaderboard. Will Homa be one of them?

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Keegan Bradley
It's almost inconceivable that Bradley could lead the field in putting, as he did at the Wells Fargo, and not win. That's how good the rest of his game is. But the rest of his game failed him big time on Sunday. Two poor drives triggered a pair of double bogeys, and a pulled approach and another wayward drive resulted in two more bogeys. He wound up in a three-way tie for second. It may take a few days, but he should feel good that he's back in the top-50 in the world at 44th, and there are many positives to take to Southern Hills in two weeks.

Matt Fitzpatrick
Fitzpatrick's tremendous 2022 continued with a shared runner-up. In nine starts, he has four top-10s and seven top-20s. It's hard to believe he hasn't won a PGA Tour event. With what we know about Southern Hills, Fitzpatrick's game aligns nicely. We're not saying he'll win there. We're just sayin'.

Cameron Young
With his second runner-up and third podium finish this season, Young just about has the Rookie of the Year award wrapped up. He's one of the biggest hitters on Tour, which we knew from his Korn Ferry days. But he's proving to be a terrific all-around player whose game translates to any track – his third-place result a few weeks ago was at tiny Harbour Town.

Rory McIlroy
McIlroy played very well in finishing solo fifth, four strokes behind Homa. He made only one more bogey all week than Homa, 11 vs. 10, and was solid in every area of his game. Even his wedge play was decent. McIlroy has now finished second at the Masters and fifth here in leading up to the PGA, where come Sunday he very well could again be on the first page of the leaderboard.
 
Anirban Lahiri
Lahiri's 2022-out-of-nowhere keeps getting better, adding a three-way tie for sixth to his runner-up at THE PLAYERS and top-15s at the Valero and Mexico. He is now ranked in the top-75 in the world.

Lanto Griffin
With a tie for 15th at Mexico and a tie for sixth at the Wells Fargo, Griffin made a late charge to get inside the top-100 in the world. He's 96th. That should be good enough to get him into the field at the PGA in two weeks, though that wouldn't become official till Monday.

Mackenzie Hughes
After finishing second at the RSM Classic last November to crack the top-40 in the world, Hughes' game regressed, to the point that he fell into the 60s OWGR. He tied for ninth at the Wells Fargo in his best showing since the RSM. Notably, Hughes was 10th in the field in scrambling, one of the hallmarks of his game, and if it's on in two weeks at Southern Hills we could see him on the weekend.

Jason Day
Days fizzled after a 63-67 start with a 79 on Saturday. He wound up tied for 15th, still one of his best showings all season. He's still working on his new swing, so it's a work in progress. Day historically has been fantastic at the PGA Championship, with top-10s in half of his 12 starts, including one as recently as two years ago.

Sergio Garcia
Two weeks before leaving the PGA Tour for good or for a while or one week or something, Garcia weathered the storm of his on-course meltdown with a closing 68 to tie for 21st. In all seriousness, if he could limit the drama at Southern Hills, his game is a good fit.

Rickie Fowler
It's just one good week. But when you hadn't had one in more than six months, it's a big deal. Fowler tied for 21st, his best showing in nine starts in 2022. Most importantly, his putter was working. He ranked 10th in the field. We still have to temper expectations because the greens were so small and Fowler is still 161st on the season in SG: Putting, but you have to start somewhere.

Matthew Wolff
Wolff couldn't maintain his opening 65, but he still wound up with a T25, his first top-25 since November. And that was with two closing bogeys to damper things. He still has a long way to go with his iron play, which has been his big miss all season. Wolff ranked 63rd in the field in greens in regulation.

Tony Finau
The good vibes from Finau's runner-up in Mexico were short-lived. He tied for 41st.

Abraham Ancer
Ancer tied for 56th, continuing a brutal year. In 11 stroke-play starts on the PGA Tour in 2022, he still is without so much as a top-30.

Joel Dahmen, Callum Tarren, Paul Barjon
Dahmen shot 64 in the first round, Tarren and Barjon shot 65. None of them finished in the top-50. Stop getting excited on Thursday.

Seamus Power
Since five straight top-15s ending at Pebble Beach, Power has missed four of six stroke-play cuts, the latest coming at TPC Potomac. The two makes were the PLAYERS and the Masters, so let's not overreact. But we'll have to monitor Power going forward.

Marc Leishman
Leishman missed only his second cut in 10 starts in 2022. But outside of the first tournament of the year in the limited field Tournament of Champions, he doesn't have a top-10 and is perilously close to fall out of the top-50 for the first time in five years, now ranked 48th.

Gary Woodland
Woodland is largely playing well in 2022, so we can't hammer him for this missed cut. But he also missed at THE PLAYERS and the Masters.

Webb Simpson
This course was not a good fit for Simpson, so this missed cut wouldn't be a big deal in a vacuum. But it's part of a very poor start to 2022, and you have to wonder how healthy Simpson is after last year's neck injury. He hasn't finished in the top-30 in seven starts. He's close to falling out of the top-50 (he's 49th). A neck injury would explain it. Without an injury, well, uh-oh.

Patrick Reed
Reed missed his fourth cut of the year and he does not have a top-25 in 10 starts since the Tournament of Champions at the beginning of January. This poor play has been going on for a quite a few months, and he's now fallen to 35th in the world.

Morgan Hoffmann
After missing the cut on the number in his return to the Tour a few weeks back, Hoffmann finished near the bottom of the Wells Fargo 156-man field. He now has just one more start on a major medical extension, and would need at least a shared runner-up to keep his card, though he surely would get some sponsor invites based his courageous battle with muscular dystrophy.