Max Homa wins Farmers after first mic’d-up, on-course interview

LA JOLLA, Calif. – Max Homa was happy to be the guinea pig this week. And he hopes his peers will follow suit. Homa participated in a live on-course interview with the CBS broadcast team during Friday’s third round at the Farmers Insurance Open, utilizing Bluetooth technology on the par-5 13th hole at Torrey Pines’ South Course. Not only did Homa enjoy the experience and receive positive feedback, he proceeded to win at Torrey Pines, his sixth PGA TOUR title. Homa is happy to continue participating in this nature of content, he said in his winner’s press conference, and he hopes his victory is indicative that this interactive content doesn’t mean a competitive disadvantage. “It was cool to win after doing it,” Homa said on Saturday evening. “You always hear people say, ‘Oh, Tiger would never do this; oh, Rahm would never do this. All they care about is winning.’ I get that, but you can do both. “That was definitely nice to win doing that yesterday. It was 20 minutes, it was not invasive … I thought it was great to look into, push the envelope for the fans.” At the time of his on-course interview, Homa trailed the lead by five strokes at Torrey Pines. He made par on No. 13; his second shot on the 595-yard par 5 found a strip of rough between two greenside bunkers and required a ruling. The ball was deemed embedded, allowing him to remove it and place it atop the grass. Homa played even-par from there to the house, and he remained five strokes off 54-hole leader Sam Ryder’s pace into Saturday’s final round on the Pacific coastline. He closed in 6-under 66, including birdies on both of Torrey South’s back-nine par 3s Saturday, for a two-stroke victory over Keegan Bradley. Homa moves to No. 2 on the FedExCup and is set to ascend into the world’s top 15 for the first time in his career. As he said, he did both. “I’m very excited about the idea,” Homa said. “I’m sure we could tweak things how other people want to do it, how other players want to do it. If they don’t want to do it, I’ll keep doing it. It didn’t bother me. “Hopefully other players want to do it. I’m sure there’s some interest in this whether I won or didn’t. Hopefully we can kind of keep pushing that or tweak it, just anything to help golf kind of gain some attraction to all the viewers, hopefully a little bit younger than our typical audience. I think that’s what the goal is.”