This image of Max Homa carrying his own bag at U.S. Open Final Qualifying is what ‘Golf’s Longest Day’ is all about

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“Golf’s Longest Day” is here. Across the US and Canada, Final Qualifying for the 2025 US Open is underway, with pros, Joes, amateurs and terminally bored former athletes all vying for a spot in the field at Oakmont. The day is golf’s great equaliser—a roiling, boiling melting pot that turns nobodies into somebodies and somebodies into nobodies. This year, one of those somebodies is Max Homa.

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Two years ago, Homa was the fifth-ranked men’s golfer on the planet. He’s now the 90th. He missed five straight cuts between February and April and has placed in the top 50 just twice in 13 starts this season. That has left the fan favourite on the outside looking in ahead of next week’s US Open, but from the looks in Columbus on Monday, the six-time PGA Tour winner is embracing the grind.

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It’s not often we see tour pros shouldering their own sticks like Atlas shoulders the earth, but thus are the unique charms of Golf’s Longest Day. For all Homa’s online fame and on-course success, he is—for the next 24 hours at least—simply “one of us.” We’re sure he would rather be in the field already, catching his breath after a long weekend at the Memorial instead gritting it out at Kinsale Golf and Fitness Club, but he seems to be taking his medicine without complaint.

Will that humility help Homa’s game in the long run? It’s tough to say, but at the very least he’ll get a good workout …