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Memorial Tournament Preview: 50th Anniversary Brings Back Memories
Dublin, Ohio — The details were far from fuzzy as 86-year-old Jack Nicklaus told the story of Muirfield Village Golf Club as the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday enters its 50th anniversary.
It is a clear pride and joy for Nicklaus to give back to the Ohio community where he grew up.
“(It is) my gift back to them and here we are 50 years later and still trying to give back to the tournament,” he reflected.
In 1966 Nicklaus was set to defend his Masters title when his close friend Bob Barton and wife Linda passed away in an airplane crash. Understandably Nicklaus did not want to play in that year’s tournament but when told Bob would want him to play, did just that prevailing in a playoff over Gay Brewer and Tommy Jacobs.
The week allowed Nicklaus to sit down and reflect on what the Masters was and that was when the idea first materialized.
He started seeking out land and the current site was the first one he and his attorney Ira looked at.
“I sort of glanced at a couple of others, but I liked this as a kid, I walked the property, hunting for pheasants, rabbits and deer,” Nicklaus said during May’s Memorial Tournament media day. “Might have found a squirrel, certainly didn’t shoot much. It was a beautiful piece of ground, so we started and bought 150 acres, which is the first piece, then another 100 acres and then we bought about 1100-some acres, ended up around 1300 acres. More land than I really wanted but that was the way it fell.”
Nicklaus, 26 at the time, needed financial assistance and once he established that they spent money on the course and wanted to trade the money for it.
The commissioner at the time, Joe Dey walked in the mud with Nicklaus during construction and stated it was one of the best properties he had ever seen for a golf course and that something special could be done.
In turn Nicklaus stated he wanted to do a tournament and the road towards the Memorial Tournament began by taking a lesser date and beginning in Cincinnati at King’s Island. He would secure the date around Memorial Day. Dey then suggested no tournament had honored people significant to the game’s past. The led to the idea of having honorees each year as determined by the Captain’s Club.
In creating the tournament, it was important to Nicklaus to remember how he wanted to be treated as a golfer. With the best course he could find, set up for championship conditions, best practice facilities and have players taken care of in the clubhouse and locker room.
He also wanted to make sure the course was not set up to where Nicklaus would profit and he gave the club a 30-year option to buy the club for $455,000 and after 7-to-8 years he received that sum.
The Memorial Tournament also has proven to be revolutionary in terms of its charitable aspect.
It was also important to Nicklaus that the Memorial Tournament was never set up to be a major much like the Masters. He cites the Masters being a tournament to play off the other major championships. For him, Bobby Jones was having a tournament of the champions, and thus, his event was named the Memorial Tournament.
Nicklaus cited Augusta National Golf Club Chairman Clifford Roberts stating that his books were open, an offer never otherwise extended. To a certain extent, Nicklaus took advantage of that offer.
“The Masters is very influential of what we did,” confirmed Nicklaus. “It is a tournament to service game of golf the best we could. I think we are pretty good. You could put it anywhere you want but certainly the top 5-to-6 tournaments in the game of golf, that’s for sure. We’re very blessed 50 years later.”
The Memorial Tournament also has been a family affair for Nicklaus as his wife Barbara has been quite active. Known as the “First Lady of Golf”, she was recognized as last year’s honoree. His son Jack II is the tournament’s general chairman and as a 22-year-old was on his father’s bag in 1984 when the latter won his own tournament.
“Jackie” filled his pockets with cigarette butts his father pointed out and it disgusted him enough to never want to smoke.
1984 was the year where in Sunday’s final round, Nicklaus hit it out of bounds on the 17th hole, leading his son to think winning the golf tournament was out of the picture. Instead, Nicklaus found the fairway with his third shot, his fourth effort left a 50-foot putt which infamously was made for a bogey. Nicklaus bested Andy Bean on the third playoff hole.
As far as his golf course, Nicklaus has been known as a tinkerer, consistently making changes. In 2021, the CBS broadcast on Sunday showed crews already at work on holes after the final pairing played through.
This change did have purpose though as Nicklaus felt the course’s evolution has gone hand in hand with how the game has tended.
“When we changed it in 2021, the changes that we’ve made are we saw how the course played in its early years and how the game has changed,” Nicklaus exclusively told PGN. “The things you would want to do in the game today and I tried to incorporate that into the game today. We saw a couple of holes probably played relatively easy, like 5, we made a little more challenging because it was always the lowest scoring hole on the golf course. 15 we got rid of the uphill into the face of the hill. There are things you can do that we couldn’t probably do 50 years ago. We didn’t have the equipment or the foresight to do that.”
As far as Nicklaus’s favorite hole on the course, he cited a pair of short par-4 holes in the third and 14th holes.
The third hole has the option for aggressive and conservative plays with water protecting the green. The 14th hole can have players trying to go for the green on the tee shot in an effort to jump up the leaderboard, but any miscue could lead to a bogey or perhaps worse.
It is Nicklaus’s viewpoint that these holes are accessible to all.
This year’s tournament in Nicklaus’s view has one of the best fields in the tournament’s history with nine of the top 10 in the Official World Golf Rankings teeing it up and several different golfers in form or in contention for a victory.
It is an event which has earned its place on the calendar and has earned the respect of golfers, fans and the community at large.
“I think any time you can play a tournament that has (Nicklaus’s) name on it is something that’s really special,” Scottie Scheffler observed. “He’s a guy that I look up to, not just from being a great golfer, but he was a great family man as well. You see it through his tournament, you see his sons here, you see his wife here, you see his grand children everywhere. Mr. Nicklaus is a part of the fabric of this tournament, and his family is as well. It’s not just about him. This is a special place for us to be able to come and compete, not only from the challenge of the golf course, but being able to play in front of the fans and carrying on Mr. Nicklaus’ legacy. This is a really cool tournament for us.”
With this year being the 50th anniversary, Nicklaus allowed himself to look forward into what the future may look like.
“I see the Memorial Tournament doing what it’s been doing, continuing to contribute to the game of golf. I don’t know where the tour is going to go right now, I wish I could answer that question,” he concluded. “I know the Memorial Tournament will be a lynchpin of what the tour does and I think they respect what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. I think we want to make sure we put on the best event we can for the game, for Central Ohio and continue to do it the right way.”
Zac’s Picks
The easy thing to do would be to pick Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. The logic is copy/paste quite frankly. Scheffler is going for three consecutive Memorial Tournament titles, and Nicklaus issued a challenge of sorts stating the Memorial Tournament is the lone tournament to elude McIlroy thus far.
Instead of going this route here are some other picks to take a look at.
Si Woo Kim – This feels like a he is due kind of pick and yes, this trip has been there a myriad of times, but there is a track record of good performance at Muirfield Village that leads to this thought.
Cameron Young– To go from qualifying for last year’s U.S. Open in a sectional qualifier to finding his best form is quite the story and what a story it would be for him to earn the infamous Jack Nicklaus handshake mere minutes from where the resurgence began.
Ben Griffin– Last year’s runner up had a great finish this past weekend and so closely removed had good perspective on it. This course suits Griffin’s game and after falling just short, he could put the pieces together.
Dark Horse
Kristoffer Reitan– Reitan won the Truist Championship last month and there is a bit of a pattern that goes into this selection. A few years ago, a golfer met with Nicklaus over lunch asking for advice and the result was Patrick Cantlay winning his first of two Memorial Tournaments. Last year, Nicklaus sat down with McIlroy to go over Augusta National Golf Club shot for shot. Reitan asked Nicklaus about Muirfield Village, and it led to a conversation. Could it also lead to history repeating itself?
