SILVIS, Ill. — Take that, X.

A day after opening up about the negative impacts of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Max Homa moved blissfully unaware beyond the inevitable and unsurprisingly ugly blowback and got down to business.

For Max Homa in 2025, it was anything but business as usual.

The six-time PGA TOUR winner's 8-under 63 in the morning wave of the opening round of the John Deere Classic was his lowest score of a forgettable year and his lowest opening round score since a 64 at The Genesis Invitational in February of 2023.

As the morning wave came home at a ripe-for-scoring TPC Deere Run, Homa shared second place with two-time winner Austin Eckroat, both a shot behind native Illinoisan Doug Ghim.

“I just did everything really solid,” Homa said of his nine-birdie round, marred only by a bogey at his final hole, TPC Deere Run’s ninth. “I made a ton of putts, kept the driver in good spots and got to take advantage of my iron play and wedge play.”

Homa finished fifth in the morning draw in Strokes Gained: Putting, gaining 3.144 strokes on the field, but of particular benefit was a driver that was more cooperative than it had been in a while.

“Just always for me this season it has started from the tee, and it was plenty good enough today,” said the 11-year TOUR veteran from Burbank, California, who hit 10 of 14 fairways and averaged 328.9 yards off the tee. “The rest of my game, I think, got to show how it’s felt without any good results.”

Homa said he may have found a fix for his driver following his pro-am round late Wednesday.

“Just my sequencing has been off,” he explained of his driver swing. “I found something to hopefully slow down my legs. It has been off all season. But I didn’t find it until late yesterday afternoon, so I’m in the honeymoon phase for a little while.”

Homa arrived at TPC Deere Run ranked 127th in SG: Driving for the year, a number in line with his 122nd-place ranking in the FedExCup standings. His considerable improvement in that statistic on Thursday morning clearly helped.

Making his third start ever at TPC Deere Run, and his first since 2017, Homa found the fairway on Nos. 11, 13, and 14, keying a string of four straight birdies on his outward nine.

He turned in 31 with a birdie on 18 and had a share of the lead standing on the tee of No. 9, historically one of TPC Deere Run’s more challenging holes. A drive into the intermediate right-side rough and an approach that found a greenside bunker led to the only blemish on his card.

Homa said he fed a bit off the success of playing partners Rickie Fowler, who came home with a 6-under 65 highlighted by an eagle on the par-5 second, and Jake Knapp, whose 3-under 68 was marred by double bogey at the par-3 seventh.

“I’m super lucky to have a group like that, two of my closest buddies out here. Three SoCal guys in the same group and everybody started making a lot of birdies,” he said. “So that was fun.”

More fun, surely, than following the reaction to his Wednesday comments on X, something Homa decidedly did not do.

“That’s the point I was making yesterday, it’s draining,” he said of the growing negativity on the feed. “There’s no point to give any attention to that.”

Homa will start Friday afternoon a shot ahead of former UC Berkeley teammate Michael Kim, the 2018 John Deere Classic winner who continued a mid-career rebound with an opening round of 7-under 64.

Kim, for the record, has taken Homa’s place as a prolific and widely followed presence on X. Kim said he knows the unseemly side of social media exists, but has mostly avoided negativity and hate.

“He had a much bigger following than I do so that means he gets way more of the bad stuff than I do,” Kim said. “I think everyone needs a break off social media once in a while. I think it’s probably better for his mental health to take some time off.”