Mark O’Meara is calling it a career and he’s doing it where he enjoyed some of his finest moments.
The 2015 Golf Hall of Fame inductee announced Monday on Golf Channel he was retiring after this week’s Pure Insurance Championship on the PGA Tour Champions at Pebble Beach Golf Links. He won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am five times.
O’Meara is a 16-time PGA Tour winner and two-time major champion, winning the Masters and Open Championship in 1998 as his final PGA Tour victories. He played in 674 events on the PGA Tour, making the cut 444 times and amassing more than $14 million in career earnings.
This week will mark O’Meara’s 284th start on PGA Tour Champions, where he has three victories, his last coming in 2019. He has one senior major, the 2010 Senior Players Championship.
O’Meara was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and took up golf at 13 years old when he lived in Mission Viejo, California. He was an All-American at Long Beach State and won the U.S. Amateur in 1979.
His first PGA Tour victory came in 1984 at the Greater Milwaukee Open. Then in 1998, he finally got his first major, capturing the green jacket at Augusta National in the Masters. Later that year, he added the Claret Jug to his trophy case, winning at Royal Birkdale. He’s one of 16 golfers to claim two majors in one season with the Open being one of them.
He announced on the Friday of the 2018 Masters after missing the cut that it was his last Masters, 20 years after he won his green jacket.
O’Meara developed a strong relationship with Tiger Woods in the latter stages of his career while Woods was just beginning. Woods slid the green jacket on O’Meara’s shoulders after his ’97 victory at the Masters.
He reached a high of No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking in that 1998 season. For his career, he totaled 34 professional victories. He won five European Tour events, two on the Japan Golf Tour and numerous others.
O’Meara earned PGA Tour Rookie of the Year honors in 1981 and then was named PGA Tour Player of the Year in 1998.
Here’s a look at Mark O’Meara’s career in photos.