While Rory McIlroy may not be in the field this week, The Memorial Tournament remains one of the biggest events on the PGA Tour calendar, with so many of the world’s best players desperate to be the one to embrace Jack Nicklaus by the 18th green on Sunday.
The Memorial Tournament is rightly a signature event on the PGA Tour. As well as being hosted by Jack Nicklaus, it is an event Tiger Woods has won on five occasions. Meanwhile, Scottie Scheffler will defend the title in the coming days.
Muirfield Village provides one of the toughest tests on tour. Three of the last five winners have failed to reach double figures under par.
Meanwhile, six of the last 11 stagings of the event have been decided in a playoff.
Why one player told Jack Nicklaus they may never play Memorial again after one change to the course
But it would appear that not everyone has always been a fan of how the course has been set up, judging by a post from Michael Kim on social media in 2024.
Kim is a player who pulls the curtain back more than anyone else. And he once told a story about an unnamed golfer who was not afraid to express their frustration with Nicklaus making one particular alteration.
It turned out that Nicklaus had made a change to how the bunkers were raked after watching Jim Furyk get up and down with minimal fuss on the 15th hole one year.
The player – who Kim confirmed was not Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson – threatened to never return to the tournament…
The effusive praise of Muirfield Village from Jordan Spieth
Obviously, there are probably only a small handful of courses which unite every single player in the game. So Nicklaus will potentially not have been surprised that some of his decisions have not always been loved in the locker room.
However, it does appear that the large majority of those who play at The Memorial each year cannot wait for the event.
Speaking in 2021, Jordan Spieth suggested that he absolutely loves heading back to Muirfield Village.
“Yeah, this is always one of our favourite stops for a number of reasons. One, the clubhouse, the milk shakes, the food, the treatment. And then two, and more obvious probably, is the golf course itself. It’s one of the kind of most fun, most difficult but purest tracks that we play all year, even with most every single hole being changed it seems like it’s still that way, which is pretty remarkable in a year’s time,” he said.
“And it’s a golf course where you just can’t, you can’t fake anything. I mean you’re either on or you’re not and you can see guys shoot 6-under and you see guys shoot six over in the same round and there’s just very few golf courses that yield that kind of disparity in scores throughout a season. So it’s always kind of a fun one to not only test your game around one of the coolest tracks, but with a couple weeks before the U.S. Open it really brings out kind of the flaws in where you’re at and what you need to kind of work on heading into a major.”
It would certainly be no surprise to see Memorial deliver another fantastic event in the coming days.
Receive exclusive golf news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
