Mark O'Meara

Lore & Background

O'Meara was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina and grew up in Mission Viejo, California. He took up golf at 13, sneaking into the nearby Mission Viejo Country Club. He later became an employee of the club and played on his high school golf team. He was an All-American at Long Beach State and won the U.S. Amateur in 1979. After graduating with a degree in marketing in 1980, he turned professional and won 16 events on the PGA Tour, beginning with the Greater Milwaukee Open in 1984. His best year came in 1998 at age 41, when he won the Masters and the British Open. He also won the Cisco World Match Play Championship that year and reached a career-best second in the Official World Golf Ranking. In 2004, he won the Dubai Desert Classic, a European Tour event. In 2007, he began play on the Champions Tour, winning his first senior major in 2010. He retired in September 2024 after the PURE Insurance Championship.

In Their Own Story

The August sun hung low over the 11th at Augusta, and the gallery had gone quiet in that particular way it does when a man is about to do something stupid and magnificent. O'Meara stood over a seven-iron, the ball sitting in a perfect lie, the flag tucked behind a bunker that looked like a small mountain. Tommy Armstrong crouched behind him, reading the wind, saying nothing. O'Meara didn't need the read. He never did. He wound up, the club describing that familiar, almost reckless arc, and the ball left the face with a sound like a gunshot crack. It climbed, hung, and dropped with a whisper of spin that carried it over the bunker lip and onto the green, ten feet from the cup. The gallery exhaled. O'Meara didn't smile. He just turned to Tommy, nodded once, and walked toward the putt like the round was already his. And at Augusta, in 1998, it was.

Reader's Guide

O'Meara is known for competing outside the United States more often than most leading American golfers, winning tournaments in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. He was involved in a controversy after the 1997 Lancome Trophy, when a television viewer observed him replacing his ball half an inch closer to the hole than indicated by his marker. O'Meara admitted he may have, without intention, misplaced the ball. He has a golf course design practice; his first designed course opened in May 2001 at Grandview Golf Club in Huntsville, Ontario. He is a brand ambassador for Pacific Links International.

Did You Know?

• O'Meara won the U.S. Amateur in 1979, defeating defending champion John Cook 8 and 7 in the final.
• He won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am five times.
• His Masters victory in 1998 came during his 15th attempt.
• He attributed his 1998 resurgence partly to the inspiration of working with Tiger Woods.
• In 2010, he won the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf with Nick Price, followed by his first senior major victory in the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship.