The First Look: Wells Fargo Championship

Returns to Quail Hollow Club for Designated event, after 2022 iteration was contested at TPC Potomac

No player has ever defended a title at the Wells Fargo Championship.

Max Homa, however, has proven he’s got the mettle to do exactly that as the PGA TOUR returns to Charlotte – and this time, for a Designated event.

This season’s Wells Fargo Championship heads back to Quail Hollow Club after a one-year detour to TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, as the usual Charlotte host club was preparing for the Presidents Cup last season. Homa will look to defend his title this year after a two-shot victory in 2022. He also won this tournament in 2019, at Quail Hollow, by three.

Homa, twice a winner already this season (he defended his title at the Fortinet Championship before capturing the Farmers Insurance Open in January), wasn’t just part of that Presidents Cup team at Quail Hollow – he was one of the top performers of the American side.

“I care about nothing more than making that Presidents Cup team,” Homa said after his victory at the Wells Fargo Championship a year ago. He ended up going 4-0-0 and provided an emotional spark, too.

Now Homa returns to a golf course – and a tournament – that he’s ultra-comfortable at. He sits third in the FedExCup standings and is seventh in the world – career highs, both.

This is a big golf course and a big stage, with the event’s purse up to $20 million as a Designated event and plenty of the world’s best nipping at his heels for their own chance to win this event.

Homa is up to the challenge to try to make a little history this week, however.

“As I started to establish myself on this TOUR when I won this event in 2019, I definitely knew I was capable of being a regular PGA TOUR player,” Homa said a year ago in his winner’s press conference, “but all of a sudden last year I get in the top-50 in the world and you start looking around and it’s a new crop of people and you start thinking to yourself, ‘Am I as good as these guys?’”

Hard to argue the answer isn’t ‘yes.’