Mark O'Meara looking forward to one more walk at Pebble Beach, his true happy place

It was April of 1980, and amateur Mark O’Meara had just finished off rounds of 80-81 and missed the cut at his first Masters. He and his father, Bob, were beginning the long journey back to California starting from the players’ lot at Augusta National. It did not take the son long to figure out why the car they were in was barely moving down Magnolia Lane.

Remember this, each of them thought. There's a chance we may never see this place again.

Despite those early fears, Mark O’Meara would go on to play in 33 more Masters, even donning a champions' green jacket in 1998, when he rolled in a curling 20-footer at the 72nd hole to become a major winner at age 41. He won The Open Championship at England's Royal Birkdale a few months later. He bade farewell to The Open in 2017, the Masters a year after that.

This week, O’Meara, who turns 68 in January, is at his true happy place, Pebble Beach Golf Links, where he will make one last PGA TOUR Champions start at the PURE Insurance Championship, which begins on Friday. Then he's out. Retirement is calling him.

After one last walk up the final hole at Pebble Beach, a venue so instrumental in his career, O'Meara will step away from the competitive game. No regrets, he says. Professional golf has been his calling for 44 years, and he has done it well, earning his way into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2015.

In a couple of weeks, O’Meara plans to be sleeping in his tent along the Grande Ronde River in the northeastern corner of Oregon, where he will fish for steelhead. When winter's snow arrives at home in Park City, Utah – he and his wife, Meredith, split time between there and Las Vegas – he will be out riding his snowmobiles. Golf? He will stay in touch, sure, but the game will fall behind higher priorities. (Fish, you’ve been warned.)

“I’ve been pretty much figuring this out for the last two-and-a-half years,” O’Meara said Tuesday as he pointed his way from San Jose to famed 17 Mile Drive, the magical entryway into Pebble Beach. “This is the way I want to go.”

Jay Haas, at 70, is part of this week’s PURE Insurance field, where PGA TOUR Champions pros partner alongside promising youths from the First Tee. Bernhard Langer, who recently turned 67, continues to work diligently to keep shooting scores below his age.

This week marks O’Meara’s sixth start of 2024, and only his second since March. He no longer desires to put the hours into his game he once did to keep sharp. He looks across to his peers who still work so hard at their golf and holds nothing but admiration.

“It’s an amazing feat to continue to have that burning desire to compete and want to win,” O’Meara said. “It’s just not me. I have so many other hobbies that I want to do.”

O’Meara will be first to tell you that he is a lucky man, as his career far outpaced the modest expectations he had when he turned professional out of Long Beach State in 1980. He captured the U.S. Amateur at Canterbury Golf Club outside Cleveland in 1979 (earning his way into that first Masters), and as a pro, he would win around the world, hoisting trophies in Japan, Australia, Great Britain, France and Dubai.

Counted among his 16 titles on the PGA TOUR were a pair of majors won in that most memorable season (1998), the Masters and The Open Championship (at Royal Birkdale), on his way to being PGA TOUR Player of the Year. He played on U.S. Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams (going 5-0 for his captain, then-Orlando neighbor Arnold Palmer, at the 1996 Presidents Cup), and won three times after 50, including a senior major (2010 Senior PLAYERS). Between the PGA and Champions Tours, he will have made 958 starts.

As a sidebar, to all else he accomplished, there was O’Meara’s astronomical success at Pebble Beach, the breathtaking links on the bay where it all began. He first laid eyes on Pebble in 1978, playing the California State Amateur (which he won a year later). His play at Pebble forged a great career unto itself; in addition to his Cal State Amateur, O'Meara won five times there as a professional: the 1985 Bing Crosby National Pro-Am and four AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Ams (1989, 1990, 1992 and 1997).

“I was fortunate to win once at Pebble Beach with my buddy Jack Lemmon (the Hollywood actor) in tow,” seven-time TOUR winner Peter Jacobsen said. “Mark won five times at Pebble, with his dad in tow. To me, that’s just an incredible feat. It goes to show you how durable and resilient Mark is. Whenever you win one of those pro-am events, you’ve got to be able to turn it ‘on’ and ‘off.’ And Mark did it five times.”

Why the magic at Pebble Beach? O’Meara has a difficult time pinpointing it, thought it was a place where he always carried great belief in himself.

He won the pro-am portion of the event in 1984 (with Texas oilman Jack Diesel), won the last edition of the Bing Crosby years (1985) and played alongside his father when he won the tournament in 1990. That was special. O’Meara took a lead to the 18th tee. His father (who died in 2010) stepped up to hit first, and promptly yanked a drive left into the rocks. He didn’t know whether he should hit another ball or not.

Mark told him to keep his ball in his pocket and enjoy the atmosphere with his son as they walked up the 18th. The son birdied 18 and won by two. Great advice.

From that point on, whenever Mark got his nose into contention on a Sunday at Pebble Beach, he was quick to remind himself: “I’ve done this before, and I can do this again.” And again. And again. And again.

“Those are good vibes,” O’Meara said. “To have your name behind the first tee (with Pebble's other champions), on that rock, playing there with my dad, then winning alongside my father? I mean, could you ask for anything more? I couldn’t.”

O’Meara knows his final walk at Pebble Beach on the weekend will be emotional (with a cut after 36 holes, it could fall Saturday, or on Sunday). His wife, Meredith, his daughter and son from his first marriage (Michelle and Shaun), his stepson, and lots of friends will be there for the celebration.

O’Meara never grows tired of the overall wonder of nature and his surroundings when he is at Pebble. It still leaves him in awe.

“When you come through the gates at Pebble Beach, and drive down 17 Mile Drive, it has such an incredible aura,” O’Meara said. “Even if you weren’t a golfer, if you were just a sightseer, Carmel, Pebble Beach, Monterey Peninsula, the courses there, just the atmosphere and scenery ... to be fair, I have yet to find a place anywhere in the world prettier than Monterey Peninsula.

“It’s just a magical place.”