1995 / 77th PGA RIVIERA : Everyone's Waiting for O'Meara to Win Big One

1995 / 77th PGA RIVIERA : Everyone’s Waiting for O’Meara to Win Big One

By Mike Downey

Aug. 11, 1995 12 AM PT

A local amateur, Shaquille O’Neal, is a neighbor of Mark O’Meara, the golf pro. They live a few par fives apart amid a country club’s greenery in Windermere, Fla., where landscapers have custom-built onto Shaq’s property a lovely shamrock of putting greens, like lily ponds from a painting by Monet, that give the basketball star his own private miniature golf course, except with real grass and no windmills.

O’Neal and O’Meara have little in common. (Hint: Only one is Irish.) But the 38-year-old golfer goes often to Orlando Magic basketball games. And young Shaq and his teammate, Penny Hardaway, both have homes on the Isle Worth course that Arnold Palmer originally developed and O’Meara helped redesign, there in golf-goofy suburban Orlando.

“A lot of celebrities live there,” O’Meara likes to joke, “and I’m not one of them.”

If he isn’t, and O’Meara is merely being modest, it could be because the long-ago Long Beach State player is one of those unjustly singled-out professionals who has inherited Corey Pavin’s dubious achievement award as the Best Player Never to Win a Major. After kick-starting the 77th PGA Championship with a seven-under-par 64, O’Meara kept taking this absurdity in stride, being his usual self-deprecating self.

While reminding everyone that the U.S. Amateur he once won was just as major as the two Jack Nicklaus won, O’Meara chuckled to himself and said: “Well, here we are, 15 years into my career, still poking along, trying to take it to the next step.

“It would be really, really nice to win this, yes. But if you asked if I would give up everything I’ve accomplished to win one major championship, I’d say no in a heartbeat.”

O’Meara thinks of himself as a world-class player and thinks of that as the highest praise. But like that big Shaq kid down the block, like the Buffalo Bills, like a lot of skilled professionals, there is one last championship hill to hike. There are athletes and teams he can clearly see when O’Meara looks in a mirror.

“Maybe the [Atlanta] Braves,” he said. “They’re winners, but there’s still that one more step.”

It must hearten O’Meara to know how many people are pulling for him. Some were in his gallery Thursday, a number of them friends from Mission Viejo, where he learned to play golf as a boy. There also are those who recognize the tireless fund-raising work O’Meara has done on behalf of Danny Wanstall, the caddie who had to leave O’Meara’s side in 1994 upon being stricken with multiple sclerosis.

O’Meara counts his own blessings. OK, so he made “only” $214,070 on the PGA Tour last year, 86th-best on the list. OK, so he hasn’t won on the tour since 1992 at Pebble Beach.

“There’s been some players who have won major championships who maybe haven’t had as consistent a career as I’ve had, so what do you do? Do you take one major and then don’t play that great the rest of the time, or do you play consistent and maybe don’t have a professional major under your belt? It’s one of those things you live with.”

Like the life itself.

“On the tour, it’s not as easy as it seems to be. Yes, the money’s good. But I won’t even see my kids for five weeks. And you take somebody like Greg Norman, he can’t go anywhere without everyone wanting a piece of him.”

Or like Shaquille O’Neal.

“Yes, but he goes by private jet,” O’Meara said. “And he’s very, very young. Shaq isn’t leaving two kids back home when he leaves.”

Winning this championship would be worth a road trip or two, though. O’Meara’s eight-birdie round put him in the early photo-op. If he keeps this up, he could be looking at a career-capper.

Then again, Mark O’Meara said, “I’m just happy when people don’t mistake me for Mark McCumber.”