Yes, Max Homa might have something on his face. He knows. It’s known as seb derm, but he’s finally got a grip on the condition that has plagued him since his teenage years.
Seborrheic dermatitis, aka seb derm, is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease that affects approximately 10 million Americans. It typically presents as red patches covered with large, greasy, flaking, yellow-gray scales, and persistent itch.
“It can be very hard to live with,” says Dr. Tina Bhutani, a board-certified dermatologist, clinical researcher and CEO of Synergy Dermatology.
After years of unknowingly dealing with seb derm, Homa finally visited his dermatologist last year at the behest of his wife, Lacey, and received the diagnosis. Now, Homa uses a once-daily, non-steroidal foam called Zoryve to treat his condition and partners with the company that makes it, Arcutis Biotherapeutics, to help raise awareness for others dealing with seb derm.
Bhutani cited several studies in which at least 58% of people experienced either clearer skin or significant itch relief, or both, after using the foam that Homa uses. She added, “It’s a really exciting time for patients with seborrheic dermatitis because we now have better treatment options for them, and we encourage people to come and see their dermatologist, see their specialty providers, so that they can get treated.”
Homa is coming off a season in which he finished No. 105 in FedExCup points. He missed five straight cuts in the spring, though snapped that streak at the Masters with a T-12 that punched his return ticket for this year. He also capped his year with three top-20s in four starts, and this year, he’s made four of five cuts and is coming off his best finish of the young season, a T-13 at the Cognizant Classic.
Homa spoke with Golf Channel last week as part of Arcutis’ Free to Be Me campaign. Here is the full conversation, where he discusses not only his battle with seb derm, but his golf game, how he learns from Scottie Scheffler and what gives him hope for the future:
Q. The condition that you have, how long have you had it or known you’ve had it, and what was the story behind getting diagnosed and ultimately addressing it and figuring things out?
HOMA: “I was in high school, and I noticed that I had flaking on my scalp, and so I thought it was just like basic dandruff, didn’t think much of it. Then in college, I started to get a bit of redness around my nose and then where my beard and mustache would be, and then I ignored it forever, hoping it was going to go away. I tried like the over-the-counter stuff, but nothing really worked. I’d have some days that were worse than others. And then finally, sometime last year, my wife was like, ‘Hey, so maybe you can like try to go to a dermatologist because they would have an answer,’ and I finally obliged, and when I went, she told me I had seborrheic dermatitis, or seb derm, which I’d never heard of, but when she explained it to me, I was like, ‘Oh, that sounds exactly like what I have,’ and I’ve been trying to treat it with stuff that obviously wasn’t going to work.
“Then she told me about the Zoryve foam, which I was a bit worried it would be cumbersome or whatever, but it wasn’t. I put it on every morning. It’s only once daily. I put it on every morning after I brush my teeth. It’s become like part of my routine. It’s very short, and it’s just been nice to have something to manage the redness and the flakiness and the dryness; I just always wrote it off as, hey, I live in the desert. I have dry skin, like it’s just a bad combo, but yeah, it’s been nice. Obviously, we do a lot of these interviews. I play golf in front of a ton of people. The last thing you want to think about is how your face is doing. So, it’s been great to get a plan on how to manage it.
“I partnered with Arcutis in this, the campaign is called Free to Be Me, and I wanted to urge people to just go, if you have an issue, go get it checked out, you know, like it’s not that crazy, even though I had done the exact same thing. Once I finally took that step, I realized I wish I’d done it so much sooner.”
Q. Was there a moment or a period when it was at its worst? And in some way, did it affect your performance on the course?
HOMA: “I wouldn’t say there was like a period of time that was worse, but you just have days where it’s way worse. So, you’d wake up and just be really scaley and itchy and uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t say that there was like a period of time or an age where it was the worst. You just don’t want to wake up in the morning and think to yourself, you know, when you look in the mirror, like, ‘Oh my gosh, everyone’s going to see this.’ I think once I got to the course, started playing, it was comfortable, I was safer, like I’ve just got to go golf, but I imagine there’s some toll just on anybody when they’re about to go out in public and they just don’t feel great about themselves. I don’t think that’s good for you.”
Q. Yeah, was it kind of embarrassing?
HOMA: “That was number one. Just a little embarrassing. I always just wrote it off as dry skin, and if people ever said, ‘You got something on your face,’ it’s like, ‘No, no.’ It’s always hard when someone points out the exact thing you are hoping no one saw.”
Q. What’s your regimen now?
HOMA: “It’s super simple. I have the foam, and I basically brush my teeth in the morning, then I put it typically everywhere on my face and some on my scalp, but, sometimes just on like the little affected areas, definitely like the hot spots. It takes almost no time, and then I get along with my day, and it’s just once a day, so it’s very light lifting.”
Q. It sounds like you need to do a get-ready-with-me video.
HOMA: “Yeah, I can do it. It would be short. That’s the good news.”
Q. Getting into your golf, you went through a lot of changes last year. How do you feel like all those have taken hold now and looking back, what was the biggest adjustment you think?
HOMA: “I think I definitely started playing well at the end of last year and kind of kept on going into this year with some improvements. Haven’t had a high finish yet this season, but it has felt pretty good. I feel like it’s close to clicking. The hardest thing with the changes, I guess, was there has to be some crossover of going through some swing changes here and there while also trying to tweak a driver where I think a couple of the weeks I should have stopped myself, but I’d hit my irons really well and then drive it poorly and look at it as I just couldn’t hit the driver well when it wasn’t going along the same parallel as my golf swing. I would swing it OK some days and poorly the others, so it was hard to ever really pinpoint what the issue was. Finally, when we took a step back last year around May, myself and John Scott [Rattan], I was like, ‘Hey, let’s stop and try to like reset and really think about this logically,’ and since then we haven’t had too many real issues.
“And then working with Mark [Blackburn] now (for a second time), he has always been really good at using whether it’s 3D stuff or Trackman or whatever to make sure that we’re not going to jump a step before we know the answer. But it really was just, I was being too picky and pretty hard on myself about the golf swing. I wasn’t really taking enough account of how much was going on around me, but it’s been a while since then, so now it’s just golf, which is nice.”
Q. You’re playing the Cognizant for the first time in four or five years. How much do you draw on the fact that this game has humbled you many times before, going back and forth between KFT? Do you feel like that experience continues to serve you well, when you’re not at a signature event or you’re not playing in a tournament that you’d like to be playing in?
HOMA: “I don’t know if I think about it too often, but you know, there are ups and downs in this game and in life, and you just put one foot in front of the other and work your hardest, and at the end of your days, whenever they say I can’t golf anymore, then I’ll at least be able to look back and say, I did what I thought I needed to do. Hopefully, I’ve got a lot more opportunities before that point. But yeah, I know I’m tough. I know that these things bother me, but I seem to get through them, so that’s the plan on this one, but I don’t think about it a ton.
“I’m very proud of the times I have played poorly and come back, but I think those times were significantly worse than this. You know, if you told me last year was going to be the worst year ever and I got 12th at the Masters, I think I would have laughed in your face. So, life goes on for us out here. It’s a very cool gig we’ve got, and it’s not lost on me how lucky we are. I just try to, like I said, work my tail off and see where that takes me.”
Q. The sabbatical from social media – it might not even be a sabbatical; it might just be permanent…
HOMA: “Yeah, it’s not a sabbatical.”
Q. Do you notice that you operate better and happier out of that kind of spotlight?
HOMA: “When I hear stories about people saying something from the internet that’s kind of dark and dire, I laugh and think about how I used to just be immersed in that. The world in public, people are so much nicer than they are on the Internet, and I think the further you get away from it, you realize the more good there is than bad, and I think that’s been – I can’t like quantify that, but it is nice to see. Get your head out of the internet clouds and realize that people are great, just have conversations, there’s so many people out there rooting for you and hoping you do great, in any walk of life, and so it’s just cool to kind of try to immerse myself more in that than the other.”
Q. How much do you and, I guess, your peers as well, how much have you guys in the last year or two tried to really study and analyze Scottie and how he approaches things mentally?
HOMA: “Absolutely. I think everything he’s doing, I would imagine everybody’s looking at, it’s remarkable. I’ve been lucky to play with him a ton of times in events, and when you look back, you kind of see in a way, best you can, of what’s going through his head and what he does so well. He’s very forthcoming in interviews, so I’ve tried to listen to those and be as mindful of what he’s saying as I can, but yeah, he does a really good job of committing to golf shots. He does a very good job in the last few weeks of, you know, you have a bad stretch of golf, but almost seems like he knows if he keeps doing the things he’s trying to do, it’ll click, and that’s shown really nicely for him. He’s a five-tool player and one of those is his brain, so it’s pretty cool to see.”
Q. Funny enough, my next question was about you being a five-tool guy. Bit of inception there. But statistically, when you were your best, you were very balanced in the four strokes-gained categories, and then mentally obviously as well. You’re still pretty balanced despite some lower ranks. So, when you look at your profile, do you sense that as well, like it’s just a matter of tightening it all up, and is that something to take some confidence from?
HOMA: “I’ve always been quite proud of how well rounded my golf game is. I think in the moment sometimes I forget that that’s a skill. I’ve always been a better iron player than anything else in my game. That’s always been the consistent kind of rock I’ve had, but I’ve been trying to realize that the rest of it statistically, even if it doesn’t feel great, shows the similar numbers. I give my iron play so much grace. If I have a bad day with the irons, I almost always am just like, ‘Well, that’s just a bad day.’ Whereas with other things, you get way more analytical and worry about it more, especially for me with my driver. When I look at it, it’s never been a major strength of mine, but when I’m playing fine, it’s still an advantage. So, I’ve been trying to take stock in that, and then to your point, though, that fifth tool with the brain is like keeping that in the right spot.
“I think as the game goes, that for me has gone up and down too much, but last week was a perfect example. I think once a day, I had one or two drives that lost me a lot on the statistical side, so if you’re only looking at that, then yeah, it looks like it’s down, but I think overall, it’s one swing a day away, from having a very good week. It feels like it’s all together. It just needs to, like you said, tighten up a little bit or sometimes on those stats, it’s like, you’ve got to hit the good shot at the right time to make up for those things. You can see a lot of kind of volatility in those numbers, so definitely really happy with how little maintenance the whole game is needing at the moment.”
Q. That reminds me of something Roberto Castro said recently. It’s like, where have we gone as a golf society where instead of describing how someone’s playing, we just say so and so gained this many shots on approach.
HOMA: “It’s very frustrating because I was thinking about it all week because like my friends were out there last week in LA, and my mom, she drove me home after on Sunday and you know, they all just say like, ‘Man, it looks so good,’ and again, it’s kind of like the internet, it’s like I had to stop with the numbers and look and say it was really good. It’s just, you know, you make one putt here and hit one more fairway there and all of a sudden everyone’s like, man, statistically you look so great. But that’s kind of the way the world has gone, unfortunately, but try to get out of your own way and realize what you are doing well, just based off your own experience is vital at some point.”
Q. This might be kind of a deep question, but what gives you hope about the rest of your career?
HOMA: “I think I just outwork a lot of people, and I think the more I can keep my brain in a good spot or get it in a good spot, I think that I can do that for a long time. I love looking at people like Adam Scott, Justin Rose and Billy Horschel, guys who are a bit older than me who are still phenomenal. You know, I’m 35 now and I swing it faster than I ever have, so I’m not really worried about that. If I stay healthy and keep the passion for the work, I think I’ll be all right.”