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It was hardly needed, but the starter went ahead and announced Mark O’Meara’s name when he teed it up at the Toshiba Classic at the Newport Beach Country Club. O’Meara, 50, might have been making his debut at the Champions Tour event last month, but his roots run deep in Orange County and playing in the event was more of a homecoming than a coming out party. As a teenager, O’Meara played this course in high school when it was called Irvine Coast Country Club. He spent his formative years honing a game that would capture a U.S. Amateur and 16 PGA Tour events, including two major championships. “It’s always nice to come back to Orange County from the standpoint that I basically spent most of my life growing up out here from the time I was in junior high through high school through college and starting my professional career,” O’Meara said. The O’Meara family moved to Mission Viejo when Mark was 13 and he soon discovered Mission Viejo Country Club was near his house. “The golf course was below the house,” O’Meara said. “For some reason even though my dad played, he didn’t take me down there. I went down there by myself and fell in love with the game.” He became a fixture at the club, doing whatever was necessary to be around the game. “Those days no one wanted a lot of juniors hanging around the club,” O’Meara said. “I would do what I could to stay out of the way. I would pick up range ball baskets, try to schmooze the assistant pro and the head pro. I got a job picking up the range and then was washing cars for the members on the weekends.” While at Long Beach State, he met his wife, Alicia, who lived in Laguna Niguel, and the two moved to an Orlando, Fla., suburb where he enjoyed a lengthy career on the PGA Tour. In 1998 he won the Masters and the British Open. It was his friendship with another famous Orange County golfer, though, that received the most attention. O’Meara befriended Tiger Woods and the two became neighbors and have remained close friends. But O’Meara had seen his game deteriorate in recent years and was losing the drive he had for golf. “The last three years I can’t say that I’ve had a tremendous amount of fun,” O’Meara said. “I haven’t been as competitive as I’d like to be. I know I can play better than what I’ve performed at. A lot of it has to do with desire, dedication and motivation. Sometimes those start to slip when you’ve done something for a long period of time. Traveling alone, sitting in a hotel room not seeing your family, that gets old after a while.” (In fact, O’Meara recently bought a home in La Quinta so he could be closer to his children. His son, Shaun, received a golf scholarship to UC Irvine, and his daughter, Michelle, is a cheerleader at USC.) Becoming eligible for the Champions Tour has re-energized O’Meara and he is expected to be one of the dominant players on the tour. He picked up his second top-5 finish in three events at the Toshiba and was satisfied with his play. “There’s a little bit more pressure,” O’Meara said. “I think people expect me to play well. I expect to play well. I want to play well. Winning is what it’s all about. It’s just a matter of getting back in the flow and getting competitive and getting confidence.” SG |
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