Hall of Famer O'Meara chooses Pebble Beach to call it quits

Mark O'Meara is ready to retire, and he has picked the ideal spot — Pebble Beach — to do it.

O'Meara won the California State Amateur in 1979, the first of his six titles over three decades at Pebble Beach. Five of those were the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the last one in 1997, when, at age 40, he held off Tiger Woods and David Duval.

O'Meara, 67, is ending his career this week at the Pure Insurance Championship, held at Pebble Beach and Spyglass, a unique PGA Tour Champions event that pairs pros with kids from The First Tee, a youth development program.

O'Meara, inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2015 at a ceremony at St Andrews, ends his career with 16 wins on the PGA Tour, three on the European tour, two on the Japan Golf Tour, one on the PGA Tour of Australasia and the 1994 Argentina Open.

He won on every continent golf is played except Africa, although he did partner with Nick Price of Zimbabwe to win the Liberty Mutual Insurance Legends of Golf, one of his three PGA Tour Champions titles.

Pebble Beach was the obvious choice when deciding to walk away from a career that started there with that 8-and-7 win over Lennie Clements in 1979.

O'Meara also won the US Amateur that year, and his two biggest wins were the Masters and British Open in 1998, making him the oldest player to win two majors in the same year.

His favorite Pebble Beach moment was winning in 1990 with his father.

"I flew him and mom out and then I won the tournament playing alongside my dad," O'Meara said. "I put that right at the top of the list of great things, winning at Augusta with a putt on the final hole, winning the US Amateur. But, to play with my father and coming up the last hole, the 18th hole at Pebble, you can't do better than that."

Scheffler tops money list

Scottie Scheffler had such a banner year, he even topped the highest earner from Saudi-funded LIV Golf.

Jon Rahm cashed in with two late victories and the season points title worth an $18 million bonus. That pushed his total to $34,754,821 in just 13 starts.

Scheffler, with his $25 million bonus for winning the FedEx Cup and $8 million bonus from the Comcast Business Top 10, earned $62,228,357 in 19 starts, while winning seven times on the PGA Tour (that doesn't include his gold medal from the Olympics and a $37,500 payoff from the US Olympic and Paralympics Committee).

Of course, Scheffler didn't get a signing bonus, either.

The LIV Golf League ended the individual portion of its season with five players earning at least $10 million. Joaquin Niemann was second with just under $24.4 million, followed by Sergio Garcia ($17 million), Tyrrell Hatton ($11.6 million) and Brooks Koepka in fifth at just under $11.6 million.

Talor Gooch leads the LIV Golf career money list with $51,856,381 in three seasons, narrowly ahead of Dustin Johnson at $51,502,981.

Missing the big picture

Shane Lowry finally made it back to Royal Portrush for the first time since he won the British Open in 2019. But, he left without seeing the enormous mural of him holding the claret jug painted on the side of a large building.

The mural was unveiled in July to mark a year until the Open returns to Royal Portrush next year.

It's hard to miss — unless someone is in a hurry.

"I'll be completely honest, we left Portrush, and we were in such a rush leaving, we totally forgot about going in to see it," Lowry said last week at the Irish Open. "We were 10 miles down the road, and we forgot to get a picture. I've been sent a lot of pictures. It is pretty cool what they did there."

Ryder Cup tickets

The Ryder Cup opened early registration to be randomly selected to buy tickets to the September 2025 matches at Bethpage Black.

Tickets for practice rounds on Tuesday and Wednesday, including food and non-alcoholic beverages, are $255.

They go up to $424 for Thursday, because it includes a Junior Ryder Cup exhibition, celebrity matches and the opening ceremony.

For the three competition days, tickets are priced around $750.

The US Open has only offered weekly tickets so far for next year's tournament at Oakmont.

Those weekly ground passes (good for Monday through Sunday) are going for $882 including taxes and fees.

A four-day badge to tournament days at the Masters last year was $450, daily tickets for tournament rounds were $140 and practice days were $100.

Agencies via Xinhua