Jack Nicklaus predicts the score which is going to win The Memorial tournament this week

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The Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village gets underway this week and Jack Nicklaus has been giving his thoughts on the score that might end up winning.

The ‘Golden Bear’ was in fine form speaking to the media as Nicklaus touched on players not speaking to the media, while there was also a feeling from Nicklaus that he was a tad disappointed in Rory McIlroy not turning up to the event.

Nevertheless, there is still a strong field on display for The Memorial and that means countless players will be in with a chance of winning.

The current tournament holder is world number one Scottie Scheffler, who won last year with a score of eight under par to see off Collin Morikawa in second.

And after Nicklaus admitted the course was tough in recent years, he’s now predicted just what the winning score could be this week.

Jack Nicklaus predicts the winning score for The Memorial 2025

Winning at Muirfield Village is no easy task and even last year, Scottie Scheffler shot two over on his final 18 holes and only just managed to sneak over the line.

This year, conditions are expected to be tough again.

However, Nicklaus has told the media that he believes a score slightly better than Scheffler’s winning effort from last year is more than possible.

“Well, I don’t know how…frankly, it will depend largely on how firm the greens are. I understand the greens are fairly firm; is that correct, Chad? Now if I can keep Chad’s ego down a little bit and have him so that the greens will hold a good shot, then I think we’ll be all right,” Nicklaus said.

“I think you’ll see. We played the first maybe 10 tournaments here, nobody broke 280. I think you’re going to probably, you’ll probably see 275 to 280. That’s about what our average score for the last few years, hasn’t it? 10-under par, some type of thing. I think that’s fine. Essentially, you look at the golf course, we’re really not — we are a par 72, but we’re really, we’re borderline not. Because you’ve got all four par par-5s can be reached. If you got all par-5s that can be reached, under certain conditions, that almost pulls you back to a 70 or 71 realistic par.

“I happen to not like, I happen to like, like it from a golfer’s standpoint to post a 4 on a hole that’s a difficult hole and say, ‘Gee, that was a nice birdie’. Oh, no, no, that’s now been changed to a par-4. I got a par-4 out that? I mean, I always liked the idea of…I felt it…internally I like birdies. So I always disliked a little bit the par, taking the par down to 72 down to 70 just to do it. And I don’t know if that answered your question or not. I didn’t answer your question. I did answer your question? What did I do?”

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The last 10 winning scores at The Memorial Tournament

The Memorial is a tough event but you can get under par and as Scheffler showed last year and Viktor Hovland the year prior, a decent score is possible.

Indeed, looking at the scores from the past decade, it does show that if the greens are receptive, then players can go incredibly low.

The last few years do seem to have played that bit tougher and it seems unlikely, as Jack says, that we’ll be up near the -15 or -19 mark like Patrick Cantlay managed.