Golfing great Mark O’Meara will be retiring this year from professional golf and he has picked the best place to do it. The Pure Insurance Championship will take place at Pebble Beach, Monterey–a place near and dear to the World Golf Hall of Fame inductee. The veteran has won there 5 times in his professional career, and now believes it’s time to call it quits.

“I’m not going to take a spot from another player, and I’m not going to compete anymore,” said O’Meara to Golf Digest revealing the reason behind his decision to hang up his clubs.“I just don’t want to be a ceremonial golfer and I’ve kind of been somewhat of that.” With 2 major wins, and another Senior Tour major win, the 67-year-old has no doubt achieved an elite status in the golfing world. In fact, some of the records are more than exquisite.

Take his 5 wins at Pebble Beach for example (and that’s excluding his one as an amateur in 1979). It’s a record he shares with only Phil Mickelson, and one he’s most proud of, for O’Meara believes that the course is one of the most spectacular places on earth. Another reason he’s chosen it for his final stand.

For O’Meara, it all began at Pebble Beach. When he was playing college golf when he was 22, he won the pro-am there which springboarded him to other victories that year including the US Amateur and Mexican Amateur.

As a professional, he tied for third in his rookie year and again won the pro-am that year. Notably, his fondest memory of the course was when he played with his father Bob O’Meara in the pro-am in 1986. They played together again in 1990 and won the tournament. The veteran dubbed the entire experience as surreal saying, “When you can play alongside your father in a PGA Tour event, it was pretty amazing.”

O’Meara’s last victory at Pebble Beach came when he one-upped Tiger Woods and David Duval in 1997. Back then Woods could intimidate golfers but not the veteran. He stood his ground, and that’s what perhaps gave rise to the pair’s long-standing friendship. His putt did not let him down and he sunk the birdie, winning at Pebble Beach for the fifth and final time.

Mark O’Meara’s most iconic moment of his career

Mark O’Meara nearly left behind a legacy of being one the best golfers to have never won a major. But 1998 changed that! He won two majors that year, the Masters and the Open Championship. But had it not been for his single 20-foot putt, his major dreams may have gone unfinished.

After 14 attempts at a victory at the Masters, O’Meara headed to Augusta as a 41-year-old with a year-long winning drought. His chances of finding his first major win there looked bleak after Fred Couples took the lead and held it on day one. On Friday Mark O’Meara was tied for ninth, behind powerhouses like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Jose Maria Olazabal. But he didn’t lose hope.

After playing one of the best rounds of his career that day, the veteran shot up to T2 alongside Phil Mickelson, behind only Couples. He held his own in the third round too, pushing the fight to the final day. Battling Fred Couples David Duval and Tiger Woods on Sunday O’Meara arrived on the 18 green with a 20-foot birdie putt on some very difficult-to-read greens. But, it was a birdie that could win him a Green Jacket.

What came next would go down in his history as one of the most memorable championship putts. O’Meara rolled the ball from right to left and it gently sunk into the cup. Soon after Woods placed the Green Jacket on his shoulders marking his first major win. That victory further motivated him to go on and grab his second major for the year 2 months later at The Open making him the oldest player to win 2 majors in a single year!