After two weeks in Texas, the PGA TOUR heads to Ohio this week for this year’s edition of the Memorial Tournament. The seventh of the eight Signature Events on the PGA TOUR schedule this season will take place at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb just outside of Columbus. The Memorial Tournament begins on Thursday, June 4, and will conclude by crowning the champion on Sunday, June 7, barring any weather issues.
Let’s start the week with a look at the format, history, and course for the Memorial Tournament.
The Format of the Memorial Tournament
The Memorial is one of the three invitationals in the Signature Events this season, so the format will be identical to The Genesis Invitational and the Arnold Palmer Invitational. The 72-player field will be cut to the top 50 and ties after Round 2, along with any players within 10 strokes of the lead. It’s a slightly lighter cut than in a standard full-field event, but it’s still a very important factor to consider.
All four rounds take place at Muirfield Village Golf Club (more details below), and since it’s a Signature Event, the purse for the Memorial is elevated to $20 million. This week’s winner will receive $4 million and 700 FedEx Cup points.
The history of the tournament
Overall, the history of the Memorial Tournament is fairly straightforward. Famous golfer and golf architect Jack Nicklaus built it, and they came. In 1974, Nicklaus completed work on Muirfield Village Golf Club, and he started hosting the tournament two years later.
Nicklaus won the event himself in 1977 and again in 1984, and Tiger Woods was the first player to win back-to-back tournaments at this venue when he repeated as champion in 2000. He added a third straight win in 2001 and two more victories in his career. Jon Rahm claimed the title in 2020 and appeared to be on his way to a second straight win in 2021 before testing positive for COVID-19 after the third round.
Last year, Scottie Scheffler won his second straight title at the Memorial Tournament and will look to match Tiger’s three-peat with a win this season. Scheffler hasn’t won since The American Express at the beginning of the season, but he has consistently been near the top of the leaderboard on Sunday.
He leads a strong field of 72 golfers to Muirfield Village Golf Club this week, including 43 of the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
Check out the full field and odds on DraftKings Sportsbook to see all the players teeing it up this year.
A Closer Look at the Course
Muirfield Village Golf Club consistently ranks in the lists of top courses to play in the country, and it has hosted this PGA TOUR event since it began in 1976. The par-72 also hosted the 1992 U.S. Amateur, 1987 Ryder Cup, the 1998 Solheim Cup, the 1986 U.S. Junior Amateur, and the 2013 Presidents Cup. The latest major renovation occurred between the 2020 and the 2021 editions of the Memorial.
Nicklaus named Muirfield Village after Muirfield, Scotland, where he won The Open Championship in 1966 to complete the first of his three career Grand Slams. The terrain doesn’t lend itself to a true links style setup due to the hills, but Muirfield Village has become its own iconic and difficult venue over the years.
The layout can stretch to over 7,500 yards and requires plenty of length, but also precision since the fairways often narrow in target areas. Nicklaus’s goal was to create a fair test of skill across all facets of the game, and Muirfield Village Golf Club achieved that goal.
“Jack’s Place” is one of the most demanding and respected non-major championship venues in the rotation each season. The course is especially tough tee-to-green, with very thick and penalizing rough and fast and firm greens. The greens are Bentgrass surfaces with plenty of slopes and treacherous pin positions to challenge players and offer risk-reward decisions on almost every approach shot. Strokes Gained: Approach is key to success on this shotmaker’s course.
The course is a tough test and usually plays as one of the most difficult relative to par in the regular rotation. Typically, the challenge results in the best overall golfers rising to the top of the leaderboard, although there have been some longshot winners in the past as well.
As you look to select the golfers you’ll add to your betting card or your fantasy lineup, some of the top metrics to consider this week are Strokes Gained: Approach, Scrambling, Par 5 Birdie or Better %, Bogey Avoidance, Strokes Gained: Putting on Bentgrass and course history.
Driving Accuracy, Strokes Gained: Approach, and Scrambling and putting on Bentgrass greens are the key metrics to target this week, and Par 4 efficiency will be key since so many of the holes this week fall into that category.
As you get ready for what should be another fun week on the PGA TOUR, be sure to get your DFS fantasy golf lineups and betting cards filled out with help from DK Network! We’ll have ongoing coverage throughout the week and exciting promotions to help you enjoy this weekend’s tournament.
