A speckle pattern is observed when a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) laser is homogenized by a diffractive optical element (DOE) due to its high spatial coherence. Therefore, a Nd:YAG laser homogenized by a DOE was previously considered not suitable to pump a Ti:sapphire laser amplifier. However, we show by experiment and simulation that the speckle structure does not manifest itself in the final amplified Ti:sapphire laser beam. By using the homogenizer, a smooth distribution of the amplified laser beam is obtained. No degradation of the energy, the wavefront, and the temporal characteristics of the amplified laser beam is observed.