Max Homa eats his words with club-throwing incident at Heritage

Golf is a constant head game. It can make pros and amateurs alike do and say the darnedest things. It can also inspire golfers to do things that directly contradict things they say. And golf made Max Homa do exactly that at the 2026 RBC Heritage.

On Wednesday, he declared that “breaking clubs makes us look very, very spoiled,” in a veiled criticism of Sergio Garcia’s Masters outburst. On Sunday, a frustrated Homa found himself tomahawk-throwing a club into a palm tree at Harbour Town.

Homa’s veiled criticism of Sergio Garcia’s Masters club smash

Let’s start with Homa’s comments on Wednesday. They occurred during his pre-tournament press conference at the RBC Heritage, where a reporter asked him about Garcia’s antics at last week’s Masters.

On Sunday at Augusta, Garcia, the 2017 Masters champion, was caught slamming his driver into a tee box, then smashing it into two pieces against a nearby cooler. Sergio was reportedly reprimanded by Masters officials and later apologized.

In his Wednesday scrum with reporters, Homa was asked about Sergio’s Masters incident, and what type of bad conduct he thinks should be barred by a future Code of Conduct policy.

“I don’t like when people break clubs. I don’t like when people beat up the golf course because we deal with it, and I think breaking clubs makes us look very, very spoiled,” Homa said.

Homa balanced his criticism by acknowledging that golf is “a very frustrating game” and by saying that “it happens.”

But he also threw his support behind improving Tour pro on-course behavior with a Code of Conduct Policy.

“We want to inspire the next generation to be better than us, so we need to be held to a higher standard,” Homa said.

Then came Sunday.

Homa tries to top Sergio with tomahawk club slam at RBC Heritage

At another point in Homa’s press conference, he admitted that he’s not immune the occasional damaging club slam during a tournament, and when he fails to live up to his own conduct standards, he becomes “very upset” with himself.

“I try my absolute best not to do it, and when it does happen, as far as slamming a tee box, I’m very upset with myself because we’re very lucky to play this game where we do, and I think it is a bad look,” Homa said.

Based on those comments, we can get a good idea how Homa is feeling this Monday morning.

Following a disappointing 74 in Round 3 that saw him fall off the pace, Homa was fighting back in Sunday’s final round, going three under through his first 10 holes. But after making a bogey at the par-3 14th hole, Homa’s chances of a solid finish waned, and his frustration grew.

When he then lost his tee shot at the par-5 15th into a grove of palm trees amid a sandy native area, the six-time Tour winner was ready to pop.

Faced with a tricky punch out between trees with his ball sitting in soft sand, Homa caught it fat. Before his ball settled back into the native area just a few yards from his original spot, Homa took his iron in both hands, wound up and then flung it with force in front of him, where it clanged into a palm tree before crashing into the sand.

Following his club throw, Homa successfully got back into the fairway, but he still made a bogey on the hole, his second in a row, to fall to one under on the round.

Three holes later, he signed for a final-round 69, leaving him T69 among the 82 players in the field.

The good news for Homa is that his poor finish didn’t negatively impact his Official World Golf Ranking, though his ranking of 117th leaves something to be desired. His FedEx Cup position did suffer, however. His poor RBC Heritage result saw him drop from 50th to 55th one week after he improved from 98th to 50th with a T9-finish at the Masters.

That’s important because the top 50 in the FedEx Cup gain access to Signature Events and majors, and players ranked within the top 50 at season’s end earn full Tour status for the following year.

But there’s a good chance the embarrassment over his club throw is haunting Homa more than his FedEx Cup fall this morning.