Valencia High School alumnus Max Homa finished his sixth career Masters tournament at 4-under par, good for a tie for 12th place and seven strokes behind champion Rory McIlroy.
It was the second consecutive top-20 finish at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, for Homa, who was tied for third last year. He was 2-over par after the first round on Thursday this year but finished 2-under in the second round to secure his weekend spot.
A six-time winner on the PGA Tour, Homa’s last made cut was in July 2024 at The Open Championship in St. Andrews, Scotland. He had missed his previous five cuts prior to the Masters and has reportedly been revamping his swing and moved on from his longtime caddie.
Homa had shot a combined 26-over the 10 previous rounds he played.
“It was a real battle in between my ears,” Homa told pgatour.com. “(The cut) was clearly on my mind. I haven’t played a weekend in a couple months. It was kind of a fun battle to do that.”
A highlight — or lowlight, depending on how you look at it — of Homa’s first round on Thursday came on the eighth hole when he was at an even par and looking to get back on the fairway after hitting his tee shot among some trees left of the fairway. Homa was successful in evading a tree and launched the ball back onto the fairway, but directly into a fairway marshal who was there to signify that Homa was clear to hit.
The ball hit the marshal in the back after bouncing once, killing all momentum that the shot had.
“Come on, dude,” Homa reportedly said after seeing what he thought was a good recovery shot stop dead in its tracks.
Homa earned $462,000 from the tournament. McIlroy earned $4.2 million of the $21-million purse, as well as the prestigious green jacket, after beating Justin Rose in a sudden-death playoff.
It was McIlroy’s first Masters victory and made him the sixth golfer ever to complete the career grand slam, and the first since Tiger Woods did so in 2000.
