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PREVIEW: 50th Memorial Tournament Brings Back Memories
Chad Mark vividly recalls the first time he stepped foot on Muirfield Village Golf Club as a college student at Ohio State University.
Mark was born in a small town and had seen the Memorial Tournament on television. He had been playing on a public course, but the eight hours he was on the grounds he was in awe.
Now Mark enters his ninth year as director of grounds, proving dreams do indeed come true.
“I thought to myself, ‘Wow, if I could ever be close to a place like that, then my career would be a success,’ ” he reflected.
Tournament director Dan Sullivan’s Memorial Tournament debut came in 1978 volunteering on the eighth-hole scoreboard after his school was invited to help support the tournament.
Sullivan would repeat the feat in 1979, and in 1986 was a waiter, taking the orders of what had to be thousands of Buckeye milkshakes.
Last year, Muirfield Village turned 50, and this year is the 50th playing of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday and next year will be the 50th anniversary of the now signature event on the PGA Tour.
“(We) couldn’t be more excited that this tournament has been so strong for so long and a contributor to so many great things on the golf course, entertainment and charity standpoint,” beamed Sullivan. “The Memorial has reached a level that allows it to be recognized as an event that is a really strong contributor and that is even more so this year with Barbara Nicklaus as our honoree.”
Indeed Barbara Nicklaus, known as the First Lady of Golf, was inducted Wednesday as the tournament’s honoree, a suggested made by her son Gary and one that gained approval of the Village’s Captains Club.
“They’re incredible people and done so much not just in the game of golf to help other people and support other people and are very humble about it, not wanting to be recognized,” Sullivan explained. “Having the fortune to work with them along with many others here is a true blessing and something that we all cherish. They do an incredible job of making everyone feel like they’re contributing to something special which we are. It’s going to be a great week recognizing Barbara and thousands of people I know want to have a chance to recognize and thank her.”
In central Ohio, the Memorial Tournament is often looked at as the start of summer and attendance has been steadily rising in recent years, all for a tournament by which the Nicklauses looked to give something back to the area.
Of course, the name itself is synonymous with its place on the calendar, which returns to Memorial Day week after being the week before the U.S. Open a year ago.
The idea of the name itself also was to serve as a tribute to those in the past who have contributed to the game of golf.
Eight of the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking will tee it up this week with Rory McIlroy being a noticeable omission in addition to LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau, a past champion of this event.
Returning to Memorial Day week was something Sullivan emphasized the importance of by mentioning that players want to play and it is sandwiched right in between major championships.
Given that the U.S. Open is being played at Oakmont Country Club in two weeks’ time, Muirfield Village is viewed as an ideal test to prepare all aspects of players respective games.
Nicklaus conceded in his press conference that returning the Memorial to its past spot was not easy, but that part of the change came from Workday itself, which saw full acceptance into Wednesday’s pro-am.
“The tour was trying to bunch things together, and you know, we fought that,” Nicklaus explained. “Finally, they agreed that we would do it this way. I think they agreed because of our sponsor, because of our history, because the name of our tournament, and I think I had a little bit to do with it, but you know. I think that you understand what I’m saying. I think the tour’s quite happy with it. I don’t think they’re having an issue with it.”
Last year’s champion Scottie Scheffler returns seeking to defend, recalling the importance of the win, his first as a father.
“Legacy events are very special for us to play,” Scheffler said in a Zoom interview during the event’s media day. “It’s great to come back year in and year out and shake (Nicklaus’s) hand coming off 18. He means a lot to the game of golf and the PGA Tour. It’s hard to say the milkshakes aren’t everyone’s favorite part of the week.
“It definitely is a major championship test. The rough is thick, hazards everywhere, not really a shot on the course you can take off mentally. It’s a great challenge for us as players.”
In terms of changes to the course both Mark and Nicklaus said there were not any. Nicklaus had no notes to give Mark and his team, pleased with how the course looks after a tough winter, and an up-and-down spring which saw plenty of rainfall.
There was some pond and stream restoration to go with the drainage process.
Last year, rain hit Muirfield Village on Wednesday night all the way until 3 a.m. the morning of round one to the tune of 1.8 inches, and Mark was able to understand how the 2020 renovations paid dividends.
“We were a little softer, fairways, rough, et cetera,” recalled Mark. “To have the greens come back and perform the way they did, especially during the weekend, with firmness shows the value of the infrastructure and the adjustment we made in 2020 was well worth what we spent on it, the time we spent on it because we both know back in the old days before we had processionaries or new green mix and all of the drainage we put in the fairways, too much rain on Wednesday night pre-2020 spelled a pretty soft tournament and that was the biggest reflection for us.
“We’re in a pretty good spot with where the infrastructure is at right now and really it was good for us to see because now, we know what to expect when that happens. If it rains every day that’s a different story, but I know 2017-19 when I was tournaments on the old infrastructure we wouldn’t have responded well to that.”
Now a lot of work is going to put Dublin on the radar once again for the next four days and what was the closest PGA Tour event for Pittsburgh fans now allows for a potential double dip of sorts with the U.S. Open right around the corner.
“When I go to Augusta National now, it’s one of those places that’s special but I took my son down this year,” Mark concluded. “He was talking about how cool certain parts of the Masters are and I told him that for a lot of people in the Midwest, including me when I was in college, people have that same feeling when they come to the Memorial. That’s something we take great pride in and hope we have that effect on people.”
THEY SAID IT
“I remember watching this tournament growing up in Norway, and I didn’t watch that many tournaments on TV, but I knew that, okay, this week is the Memorial Tournament and a list of great champions have won this event, including watching Tiger win multiple times when I was younger and obviously just seeing everyone shake Mr. Nicklaus’s hand after winning on the 18th green. It’s just such a unique golf course, such a cool place. I really enjoy it here. Yeah, really lucky to be a part of that, a past winner, so just cool to be a part of it.” – Viktor Hovland
“It’s a place I’ve always loved. This is probably the only golf course where I’ve stepped foot on it before I actually played and said, ‘I love this place, no matter how I play.’ It’s kind of rare to find that, but thankfully the results have kind of followed from it. It just fits. It’s a tough golf course, it’s playing really tough already so far on Wednesday, and it’s only going to get tougher.” – Colin Morikawa
