[PHOTO: Andy Lyons]
Max Homa played his best golf in well over a year at last weekend’s John Deere Classic. He started the tournament with a scintillating eight-under 63 and grabbed the outright lead briefly on the final day before fading, finishing two strokes out of the playoff between Emiliano Grillo and eventual winner Brian Campbell.
RELATED: Max Homa records best finish in 15 months, but says it’s still ‘super-disappointing’
The performance was still a huge step in the right direction for Homa, whose T-5 at TPC Deere Run was his first top-10 in more than 14 months, but that wasn’t good enough for some deranged golf punters, who took to the internet to harass Homa and even send him a $US1,900 ($A2,900) Venmo request to cover their losses. We couldn’t make this up if we tried.
The first message is truly vile, but unfortunately not out of ordinary on social media these days. People in the public eye get messages like this on a daily basis. That doesn’t make it acceptable, and it shouldn’t be normalised, but sadly it’s not surprising. What Homa shared next, however, was a jaw-dropper.
In addition to the mindless, hateful spew of deranged individuals like @zane_layer3, Homa got a Venmo request for $US1,900 from a faceless (of course) troll by the name of Carl Watkins, including the description, “Bc you can’t putt under pressure.” In the immortal words of Elaine Benes, we are speechless, we are without speech.
It goes without saying that if you can’t cover your gambling losses, you shouldn’t be gambling. This is the very first thing in every betting service agreement on the planet earth. If you or someone else ignored that basic financial advice because of a gambling addiction, seek your state’s dedicated resource centre. Gambling addiction is an illness, but that illness is not Max Homa’s fault any more than it is his problem.
Of course, it’s no coincidence that Homa received this harassment just days after he explained his prolonged X/Twitter absence, calling it “a safe haven for a–holes”. During the same answer, Homa mentioned that he was still on Instagram from time to time, where the abuse, while still present, wasn’t as bad. Unfortunately, these attention-starved individuals saw this as a challenge, and did their best to ruin Homa’s weekend. Joke’s on them, though. While this idiot was trying to scrape up $US1,900 to cover his crappy bet, Homa pocketed more than $US278,000 at TPC Deere Run. As always, the fastest way to shut up the haters is to simply point to the scoreboard.
