Max Homa isn’t the biggest pro golfer and if you didn’t know better you might think he’d pass for an accountant playing in the pro-am. In short, his isn’t the first name that pops to mind when the PGA Tour’s longest drivers are mentioned.
After all, he averaged “just” 305 yards off the tee during the 2022-23 season, which ranked 62nd on Tour. He’s slightly better than average, a good 21 yards behind Rory McIlroy league-leading average of 326 yards per blast.
But during Saturday’s third round of The Sentry in Hawaii, Homa staked his claim to being the Tour’s biggest bopper, smoking a tape-measure drive at the par-4 525-yard seventh hole at Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course that measured an eye-popping 477 yards. It is the longest recorded drive on the Tour in the ShotLink Era (since 2003).
Before the calls that this should be entered into evidence as proof the ball goes too far and must be rolled back as soon as humanly possible (such as before Sunday’s final round in Maui), it should be noted that the seventh hole is a downhill, sharp dogleg right and it played downwind on Saturday. The locals call Plantation “The Planet” and the pros typically hit it out of this world at The Sentry. In 2023, 89 of the 121 drives of 400+ yards on the PGA Tour were launched here.
Thanks in part to a tailwind, Homa’s blast is in the record books. Four. Hundred. Seventy-Seven. Yards. Wind-aided, downhill, rolls forever on a sloping fairway, plays shorter than it’s posted yardage, sure, but 477 is still 477 and we bow to down to Homa, who delivered quite the poke.
See that little red dot?
That’s @Maxhoma‘s tee shot on a 525-yard par-4!!!
477 yards!!!!!
LOVE Kapalua pic.twitter.com/wYEl2sZMyB
— Jack Hirsh (@JR_HIRSHey) January 6, 2024