Legendary Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda makes good on promise to Max Homa following Wells Fargo win
Tiger Woods might seem like the biggest L.A. Dodgers fan on the PGA Tour, but that title truly belongs to Max Homa, who claimed his first PGA Tour victory on Sunday at the Wells Fargo Championship. If you followed Max on Twitter during last year's World Series between the Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox, you witnessed Homa go through the gamut of emotions, just as any diehard fan would if their team was in the Fall Classic. "Sports are dumb, I don't even care," Homa tweeted on October 28, the night the Sox closed out the Dodgers to win the series.
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A day earlier, Homa also sarcastically tweeted "I guess I need to rely on myself for sports success. What a joke" following the Dodgers loss in a pivotal Game 4. Little did he know that just over six months later, he'd deliver on that promise to himself in a big way, by claiming his first tour title by three strokes over the likes of Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy. Not bad for a guy who made less than $20,000 on tour two years ago.
Homa wasn't the only one to deliver on a promise on Sunday either. Legendary Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who led L.A. to two World Series wins in the 1980s, made good on a promise as well. In a video tweeted out by the PGA Tour following Homa's win, you'll see Homa and Lasorda meeting for the first time at Dodger Stadium. It doesn't say when it's from, but it certainly wasn't recent, which makes what happened during Homa's victory press conference at Quail Hollow that much cooler. Here is the original clip, in which Homa receives an autographed picture from Lasorda, and some sage wisdom:
Homa clearly did put Lasorda's advice to good use. After missing 15 of 17 cuts on the PGA Tour in 2017, the 28-year-old from Burbank, Ca., returned to the Web.com Tour in the hopes of regaining his PGA Tour card. After a lackluster season, it appeared that dream would be dead at the WinCo Foods Portland Open, where Homa was in grave danger of missing the cut late in the second round. In order to make the Web.com Tour finals, Homa needed to make the weekend in Portland, and he did thanks to four birdies to close out his round. He went on to finish T-21, T-6 and 7th in his next three finals events, enough to secure a return to the PGA Tour.
Now, he's a PGA Tour winner, and Lasorda, who is now 91, was clearly paying attention on Sunday. He said he would call him when he won his first event. He wasn't lying:
Really does not get much cooler than that. Hell of a memory on Lasorda, who isn't exactly getting any younger. Awesome to see that Homa still remembers the day they met and the advice the Hall of Famer gave him.
