Max Homa is looking for a bounceback 2025 on the PGA Tour after his first winless season since 2019-20, and a fresh outlook is starting with some new threads. The Scottsdale, Ariz., resident is the newest Lululemon ambassador on the PGA Tour, joining Min Woo Lee in representing the popular athleisure brand.
He is making his season debut and Lululemon launch this week at the Sentry (Homa is also playing Cobra equipment and wearing Puma shoes) and before leaving for Hawaii, Homa visited with Sports Illustrated to discuss the new partnership, how to pack and unpack on the road, Ryder Cup motivation and more.
Sports Illustrated: This is a new look for you; how did this partnership come together?
Max Homa: It was the end of my contract with FootJoy and for the first time I really felt like going around and looking at the other opportunities. Lululemon is one of those companies that is such a mainstay and a staple in so many people’s lives but maybe not as much in golf yet, so hopefully I can help make that progress in the right direction.
My wife loves it, which also helps.
SI: I confess, I didn't know that much about the brand before Min Woo, but my two teenage daughters are fanatical about it with the shoulder bags and everything. And you had Lululemon already in your closet?
MH: (The company) said some interesting things to me early in the process, talking about golf and for men, if they buy one thing they like, they’re gonna go back and get it again. That’s how I felt when my wife bought me my first Lululemon workout shirt years ago. I didn’t know much about it and she’s asking how it is—I’m like, this is all I would like to wear going forward. I’m a repeat buyer and that’s kind of how they were pitching the golf thing.
They want people to know more about the fact that they have golf clothes, golf shirts and once that happens, people will gravitate more to getting it. Wearing the workout stuff makes you feel good, it moves really well, all those things. So I knew the golf clothes would be amazing.
SI: You’re going to have some cold mornings coming up on Tour. What’s the go-to for you when you’re layering up and surviving 40-degree mornings?
MH: All of the long-sleeved stuff is just different than a lot of golf clothes. It’s very form-fitting, so it’s tight on you, and so even the thin stuff feels a bit warmer. Especially thinking like the mornings of the Waste Management (Phoenix Open), the mornings in L.A., you can still move really well in them. I don’t know if “malleable” works in this sense, but it moves around with you. I always found that it’s hard in cold when you’re already moving slowly, but you don’t want cumbersome clothes that also make you move slowly.
It sounds so silly, but when you walk outside and you feel good about yourself and you’re able to move around and not feel restricted, it goes a long way to just your confidence level when you're playing.
SI: It’s not silly. When you look at what guys were wearing 50 years ago, could you have imagined playing in the polyester pants and the thick sweaters and …
MH: (laughs) I can’t. And a tie?
SI: It looks miserable.
MH: It does. So we’ve come a long way. I have a big thank you to companies like Lulu just for progressing this in the right direction (laughs).
SI: So when you start a relationship with a company do you tell them ‘I don’t like this,’ ‘put me in these colors’? Do you have certain parameters that you like to fit for your own style?
MH: I’m not super-picky. As far as colors go, I would like to branch out a little bit more with having more unique colors. I get stuck in just wearing—and this is my own fault—just wearing a lot of blues, blacks and whites. I’ve tried to throw it into some pink in there as of late. I really just don't wear red—I went to Cal and we don't wear red there, because of Stanford. Although I do have to wear red for the TGL (his Jupiter Links team color is red), so that’ll be a bit of a wrinkle for me.
SI: You mentioned your family, I’m sure your wife’s eyes glaze over at boxes of clubs but will it now be like Christmas when the Lululemon boxes keep coming in?
MH: Absolutely. That was also a big added bonus. My wife is big on athleisure, she wears the yoga pants, quarter-zips, workout shirts and all those things. The crossbody bags as you mentioned, I mean, they’re all over my house—and all this was prior to any kind of partnership. It's rare that you can get your wife excited about your golf partnerships and this one definitely nails it.
SI: You’re going on the road for a couple of weeks. Do you lay out outfits for every day or are you more like, I’m going to take 10 shirts and 10 pants and figure it out?
MH: I don’t do a great job of this, I’m a foot in each of those. A lot of it is an experience thing, it’ll be maybe a little trickier in the beginning of the season, but as I get going I’ll know there are certain outfits that I like to put together. I try knowing that ‘hey, I have the green pants, those go well with the black shirt,’ so as long as I know I got both those in the bag, I can make something work. For the most part for me, I do have a 2-year-old. It’s a bit of a mad dash when it comes to packing. So some experience with what works with what goes a long way.
SI: When you get to a hotel room, are you a live-out-of-the-suitcase guy or do you have to take everything out and put them in the dressers and closets?
MH: This is a great question. My biggest pet peeve with myself is that when I do live out of my suitcase, I hate it. I wouldn’t call it quite a New Year’s resolution, but like last year I kept telling myself every time you get somewhere you’re gonna unpack, like put it in the drawers so you can see everything and get ready so that we’re not digging through a suitcase to find what we need. It makes a world of difference. You just get lazy, you throw the bag down and you figure I’ll be able to grab this as I need to, and it doesn’t really work that way.
SI: As resolutions go, that seems to be achievable, right?
MH: Yeah, I can do this one.
SI: Away from suitcases, what is your Phoenix Open week like? When you’re a hometown guy, is it is it easier or not so much?
MH: I think it sucks living here for it (laughs). The event is awesome and I feel like it’s even more awesome living here because I have so many friends that come out to watch, I know so many of the Thunderbirds who run the event, and having a golf course to go to other than that one during the week is actually quite nice—going to Whisper Rock or Silverleaf during the week to get away is nice to practice. But yeah, I mean, it turns my 24-minute drive to TPC Scottsdale into an hour. You can’t go out to dinner because everywhere is absolutely slammed. You have 12 million people asking you for tickets or things, so that gets old, and there's so much fun going on and you can't participate in any of it.
It’s a week I almost wish I didn't live here, but then again, sleeping in your own bed for a golf tournament is one of the coolest things in the world.
SI: What's the craziest thing you've seen or heard from the spectators?
MH: I know some stories I can't tell. As far as like heckling goes or something of funny a fan says, a lot of the times it’s recycled, like, we’ve heard it a thousand times. But five years ago or so, one of the many years the Chiefs have been in the Super Bowl, we were on 17 green and across the lake on the left there were some guys on lawn chairs, just laying out later in the day.
My caddie Joe’s on the other side of the green and I marked my ball and I chucked it to him, fairly far, it was actually an uncommonly good throw. I hit him right in the hands and some guy yelled “Patrick Mahoma!” and that one got me. I hadn’t heard it before, it was funny, it was timely.
SI: It’s a Ryder Cup year. Is that in the back of your mind from the very first week in 2025?
MH: Yeah. I have this (reaches on his shelf for a miniature Ryder Cup), they give you this even when you lose, and I don’t want it. I hate because it’s just a reminder of how we got thumped, but I also like to look at it a lot because it’s super-motivating. I’m lucky I’ve been on three teams we've won two of them (Presidents Cup 2022, 2024). I've never won a Ryder Cup.
Luke Donald just said in the video that came out about it, that Darren Clarke told him, when you’re at one of these, you’re going to want to be at the rest of them for your entire career. And that could not be more accurate. I don't want to picture not being in there and having to watch on TV, so, yeah, it definitely gets you up in the morning, deciding to go hit balls and and get better.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Q&A: Max Homa Discusses New Deal With Lululemon, Phoenix and a New Year’s Resolution.