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26
KIDS LEARN TO “PLAY STRONG” AT NATIONWIDE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
BY BOB BAPTISTWith support from the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday and Eat. Learn. Play., children find fun in making physical activity part of their daily routine
36 THE CAPTAINS CLUB
The distinguished group that guides the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday
40 CAPTAINS CLUB SERIES
BY DAN O’NEILLClifford Roberts: The Augusta National chairman was a natural selection for membership in Jack Nicklaus’ inaugural assemblage
48 SHE MADE IT WORK
BY DOUG FERGUSON
For those who say you can’t have it all, Juli Inkster, champion golfer and devoted mother, sure proved them wrong
72 DESTINED FOR SUCCESS
BY DAVID SHEDLOSKITom Weiskopf is remembered not only for his playing ability, but also for his contributions to golf as a course designer and broadcaster
BACKGROUND PHOTO CREDIT: PGA TOUR/Getty Images
88 NO BYLINE NECESSARY
BY JOHN STREGEDoug Ferguson, Memorial Golf Journalism Award recipient, has been a prolific golf beat writer for the Associated Press, though readers might not always know his work
96 HIS “FIRST BIG WIN”
BY JIM McCABEViktor Hovland found plenty to be happy about in 2023, starting with his playoff victory in the Memorial Tournament
110 A COURSE LIKE NO OTHER
BY DAVID SHEDLOSKIFifty years ago, Jack Nickaus opened Muirfield Village Golf Club and fulfilled his dream of building the ultimate tournament course in his hometown
125 MUIRFIELD VILLAGE GOLF CLUB HOLE-BY-HOLE
HOLE DESCRIPTIONS BY JACK NICKLAUS
The Memorial Founder and Host highlights key changes to his prized golf course and reviews strategy of each hole
162
25 YEARS AGO… FIRST OF FIVE BY BOB BAPTIST
Tiger Woods began his record run of success in the Memorial Tournament with a two-stroke victory in the 1999 edition
ON THE COVER: 2024 Memorial Tournament Honoree Juli Inkster after her victory at the 2002 U.S. Women’s Open at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson, Kansas. CREDIT: Getty Images
GARY VAN SICKLE
After assessing the data on the distance elite players are hitting the golf ball today, the game’s governing bodies could come to only one conclusion in response
FOUNDER AND HOST JACK W. NICKLAUS
PRESIDENT STEVEN C. NICKLAUS GENERAL CHAIRMAN JACK W. NICKLAUS II
CAPTAINS CLUB
Paul Azinger • Judy Bell • Aneel Bhusri • O. Gordon Brewer Jr. • A.S. (Sandy) Dawson • Tim Finchem • Jim Furyk • Dr. Trey Holland • Juli Inkster
Hale Irwin • Tony Jacklin • Ken Lindsay • Charles S. Mechem Jr. • Barbara Nicklaus • Jack Nicklaus II • Steven C. Nicklaus • Andy North • Hisamitsu Ohnishi
Gary Player • Judy Rankin • Fred S. Ridley • Johann Rupert • Carol Semple Thompson • Tom Watson
ADVISORY BOARD: Mollie Marcoux Samaan • Jay Monahan • Sellers Shy • Martin Slumbers • Seth Waugh • Mike Whan
VICE CHAIRS
Donald “Ric” Baird III • Todd Bork • Chris Campisi • John Ciotola • Paul Heller • Jeff Logan • Daniel Maher • Nate Miles • Dayna Payne
CHAIRS, DIRECTORS AND ADVISORS
Rich Aldridge • Sheriff Dallas Baldwin • Chief Russ Baron • Ryan Beale • Joann Bigler • Jeff Bordner • David Brooks • Debby Cacchio • Lee Campbell
Ann Clark • Dave Clark • Lt. Robert Curren • Lt. Rob Curry • Tony D’Angelo • Alex Fischer • Rob Geis • Deputy Chief Jim Gilbert • Jay Gray • Chris Hale
Everett Hall • Jack Harper • Major Carl Hickey • Katie Logan • Annie Miles • Barb Miles • Tony Mollica • John Montgomery • Jillian Obenour • Chief Justin Páez
Ken Peters • Tina Quinn • Daryll Rardon • Tony Ruscilli • Charles Ruma Jr. • Jacob Rumfola • Tom Rumfola • Dr. James Ryan • Chief Ron Sallows
Bill Shulack • Todd Sloan • John Sokol • Barb Stieg • John Stieg • Deputy Chief Nick Tabernick • Jan Wallace • Ike Wampler • Bob Warner
NATIONWIDE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL COMMITTEE
CAPTAINS: Anne Bogenrief • Dick Curtis • Angie Fallon • Paula Ferguson • Julie Seiple • Marcy Williams
COMMITTEE: Bob Adamek • Amy Andrews • Jennifer Bollinger • Beth Branstiter • Lisa Colosimo • Amanda Coulter • Dee Dee English • Beth Fitzgerald
Shannon Ford • Jean Gans • Lauretta Godbout • Courtney Grant • Terri Heaphy • Susan Houser • Suzanne Jennings • Sarah Jones • Michele Joseph
Donna LeCrone • Susan Long • Allison Main • Kimberly Miller • Nancy Minton • Jessica Ossege • Liz Patel • Meg Patten • Sandra Puskarcik • John Rhodeback Keith Rittenhouse • Kelly Rogers • Joe Scott • Michelle Scott • Teri Slick • Stephen Smith • Tom Vinci • Sally Wood
DIRECTOR, MARKETING & COMMUNITY RELATIONS Heather Ditty
TOURNAMENT COORDINATOR Denise McBride
TOURNAMENT ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR DAN SULLIVAN
DIRECTOR, SALES Paul Howard
DIRECTOR, ADMISSIONS Ryan Beech
ASSOCIATE, ADMISSIONS Matt Kill MANAGER, ADVERTISING & MARKETING Elizabeth O’Grady
DIRECTOR, ACTIVATION Kristina Khalili
ASSOCIATE, SALES MacKenzie Edgar
DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS Tom Sprouse
ASSOCIATE, SALES Will Hannah
MANAGER, DIGITAL MARKETING Trey Herring MANAGER, COMMUNICATIONS Ashley Grimmer
DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS Chris Stiffler
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT Mary Peterson
MANAGER, ACTIVATION Zoe Allocco OPERATIONS HNS Sports Group
muirfield village golf club PRESIDENT JACK W. NICKLAUS GENERAL CHAIRMAN JACK W. NICKLAUS II
CAPTAINS OF MUIRFIELD VILLAGE GOLF CLUB
Jack W. Nicklaus (1980-81) • Ivor H. Young (1981-82) • Robert S. Hoag (1982-83) • Pandel Savic (1983-84) • Jack Grout (1984-85) • Edwin D. Dodd (1985-86) John F. Havens (1986-87) • John H. McConnell (1987-88) • H.M. “Butch” O’Neill (1988-89) • James E. Nolan Jr. (1989-90) • Fritz Schmidt (1990-91)
Richard F. Chapdelaine (1991-92) • Ken Bowden (1992-93) • James R. Fabyan (1993-94) • Dr. Russell L. Bowermaster (1994-95) • Barbara Nicklaus (1995-96) Jack Hesler (1996-97) • David G. Sherman (1997-98) • Alphonse P. Cincione (1998-99) • David L. Barnes (1999-2000) • Dr. Robert J. Murphy (2000-01) David J. Harris (2001-02) • Charles R. Carson (2002-03) • Kerry F.B. Packer (2003-04) • Richard R. Corna (2004-05) • Silas W. Thimmes (2005-06) Charles S. Mechem Jr. (2006-07) • Carol Young (2007-08) • Paul B. Long Jr. (2008-09) • John G. Hines (2009-10) • George McCloy Sr. (2010-11) Phil Campisi (2011-12) • Frank Bork (2012-13) • L. Jack Ruscilli (2013-14) • Jeff Logan (2014-15) • Tom Welker (2015-16) • Dr. John R. Evans (2016-17) Dr. William E. Sloan (2017-18) • Scotty B. Patrick (2018-19) • David P. Lauer (2019-20) • John Ciotola (2020-21) • Daniel M. Maher (2021-22) Christopher N. Johnson (2022-23) • Christopher A. Campisi (2023-24)
DEPARTMENT HEADS
GENERAL MANAGER & CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER NICHOLAS LaROCCA
DIRECTOR, GROUNDS OPERATIONS Chad Mark
EXECUTIVE
Stephen Demeter
Peter Dornisch
DIRECTOR OF GOLF Larry Dornisch
MEMBERSHIP Sandi Karnes
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER John Jankovic
Mike McKee
Nick Smithson
Monday, June 3 — Practice Rounds
Tuesday, June 4 — Practice Rounds
Wednesday, June 5 — Practice Rounds
Salute to Service Day
Honoring military members, veterans and first responders
Workday Golden Bear Pro-Am – 6:50 a.m.
Memorial Honoree Ceremony – Practice Range – 2 p.m.
Tournament Honorees: Juli Inkster, Tom Weiskopf
Memorial Golf Journalism Award: Doug Ferguson
Thursday, June 6 — First Round
Friday, June 7 — Second Round
Folds of Honor Friday
Wear red, white and blue to recognize Americans who serve
Saturday, June 8 — Third Round
Sunday, June 9 — Final Round
Play Yellow Sunday
Wear yellow to support Play Yellow and Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Trophy presentation following play, 18th green
SUN., JUNE 2 — The Memorial Tournament Special, CBS Sports, 2 p.m.
WED., JUNE 5 — Memorial Honoree Ceremony, Peacock & GolfChannel.com, 2 p.m.
THURS., JUNE 6 — Golf Channel, 2-6 p.m., replays: 7-11 p.m., midnight-4 a.m.
FRI., JUNE 7 — Golf Channel, 2-6 p.m., replay: 9 p.m.-1 a.m.
SAT., JUNE 8 — Golf Channel, 12:30-2:30 p.m.; CBS Sports, 2:30-6 p.m.; Golf Channel replays, 9 p.m.-1 a.m.; 3-7 a.m.
SUN., JUNE 9 — Special–Week in Review, CBS Sports, 2 p.m.; Golf Channel, 12:30-2:30 p.m.; CBS Sports, 2:30-6 p.m.; Golf Channel replays, 8:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m., 2:30-6 a.m.
BY
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
David Shedloski
CREATIVE & PRODUCTION DIRECTOR
Larry Hasak
ART DIRECTOR
Matt Ellis
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Debbie Falcone
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Scott Tolley
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Melody Manolakis
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Bob Baptist • Doug Ferguson
Ron Green Jr. • Jim McCabe
Dan O’Neill • David Shedloski
John Strege • Scott Tolley
Gary Van Sickle
PHOTOGRAPHY
Alamy • AP Images • Getty Images HistoricImages.com • Inkster Family
Jim Mandeville • Brian Morgan the Memorial Tournament Archive
PGA TOUR Images • USGA
HONOREE PORTRAITS
Glenn Harrington
Ron Ramsey • Anthony Ravielli
BY
Dan Sullivan
ADVERTISING SALES
MacKenzie Edgar • Will Hannah
Paul Howard • Dan Sullivan
MAGAZINE
Heather Ditty • Kristina Khalili
The thriving 11-county Columbus Region isn’t just home to 2.3 million people — it’s also home to some of the world’s most recognizable brands, innovative small businesses, powerhouse research hubs, and top-notch academic institutions. All of which are dedicated to creating a prosperous region that advances the social and economic well-being of all residents.
Learn
THE GAME of golf—including all we have done at Muirfield Village Golf Club and with the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday—has always been a family business to us. But it would be more accurate to simply say we are in the business of family.
Family has always been the priority in my life and has given me the inspiration and balance needed for success inside and outside the ropes. Anything of significance I have accomplished in my life is because of and for my family.
Juli Inkster is also all about family.
We are thrilled Juli is the Honoree for the 49th playing of the Memorial Tournament. Her 31 LPGA Tour victories, including seven major championships, provide all the golf résumé anyone might need. But underlying Juli ’s greatness is that she is both a Hall of Famer and a Hall of Fame mother.
Finding the balance to be both was not lost on Juli, nor her emotions, when she spoke at her 2000 World Golf Hall of Fame induction: “The pride of our lives is not the Grand Slam or the trophies. It’s our two daughters,” Juli said at her induction ceremony. “We never thought we could love two people as much as we love them. I want to thank them for letting me be their mother and letting me do what I love to do. And that’s play a little golf.”
first full LPGA Tour season.
But as her husband Brian, the head professional at Los Altos Country Club in California, simply put it, Juli “really had two different careers.”
Juli had 13 victories and three majors before she became a mom with the birth of daughter Hayley in 1990. That would be a great career in and by itself.
What is more impressive about Juli is that she won 18 times, including four majors, after becoming a mother. Juggling diapers and a limited schedule, Julie recorded two victories in the four years between Hayley’s birth and when daughter Cori was born in 1994.
Juli remains the only player in LPGA Tour history to win at least two majors in a decade for three consecutive decades.
Beyond her success, Juli has been one of the great ambassadors and stewards of the game—from being synonymous with the Solheim Cup (12 Cups as either a player or captain) to her support of the college game with the Juli Inkster Award presented by Workday. The award recognizes the top Division I women’s collegiate golfer in her final year of eligibility, and also includes a donation to the player to help her transition to the professional game.
What I love most about Juli is that she always leads with her infectious personality and enthusiasm. She cares deeply about the future of the game, and is a respected voice in the Captains Club for the Memorial Tournament.
Whether it was making birdies or bake sales, Juli always found the time to be the best at what she was doing.
She was a three-time All-American at San Jose State University, where she won 17 times. Then, in 1980, at the age of 20 and on the heels of her honeymoon with husband Brian, she won the first of her three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles.
When Juli turned pro in 1983, she immediately made her presence known on the LPGA. She won the Safeco Classic in September of 1983, then won two major championships in her
We are so honored to be able to pay tribute to Juli and can’t wait for her to flash that smile at the podium.
If you want to learn even more about Juli’s inspiring journey, flip to page 48 of this magazine, and read a tremendous story by Doug Ferguson, the recipient of the 2024 Memorial Golf Journalism Award.
Doug has been the national golf writer for the Associated Press for 27 years and is more than deserving of this award. No one works harder at covering the game than Doug. He’s always out on the course, Hawaiian shirt on his back and seat-stick in
hand, truly covering the action. He’s fair, balanced, accurate, and I am proud to call him a friend.
I’m not sure if I would say Juli Inkster is like a daughter to me or a second little sister. Most people know that I have one sibling, my younger sister Marilyn, who is holding down the family fort in Columbus and whom I dearly love. But I never had the opportunity to know what it’s like to have a little brother. Someone to pick on. Someone to blame for things I did wrong. And, of course, someone to help steer down the right path.
I think I have an inkling of what it might be like to have a little brother, because in many ways, early on, that is how I looked upon my relationship with Tom Weiskopf.
We lost Tom way too early when he passed away on Aug. 20, 2022, at the age of 79 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. I lost my father and my uncle to that hideous disease, so Tom’s struggle hit me particularly hard. Tom was a dear friend to Barbara and me. A little brother, if you will.
Our paths were so similar.
Like me, Tom was an Ohio native. His father was a railroad worker; my grandfather on my mother’s side worked on the railroad. Tom attended Ohio State, joining the Buckeyes just as I was finishing up there.
rhythmic. He was, simply put, impressive. At times, however, Tom was inclined to be his own worst enemy. He was often hard on himself, once saying that he was “over par” for his career, meaning he thought he should have won more when he had every reason to celebrate his many accomplishments. So, let’s be the ones to celebrate on Tom’s behalf. That’s why I am thrilled that Tom is being honored posthumously as our second Tournament Honoree.
Less than a year after Tom’s heralded and well-deserved victory in the 1973 Open, he helped me open Muirfield Village Golf Club with an exhibition on Memorial Day, May 27, 1974. So, to recognize him on these same grounds 50 years later is something very special for the Memorial Tournament, and especially for me, Barbara and my entire family.
Tom enjoyed tremendous success there and then found the spotlight as a pro. Tom had 28 professional victories, won 16 times on the PGA TOUR between 1968 and ’82, and was a major champion—winning the 1973 Open Championship at Troon, where he was under par in all four rounds.
We both developed a passion for golf course design, and we each enjoyed rewarding design careers. Tom came to me early and said he wanted to understand what we did in golf course design. So, like a little brother, I had him tag along on a number of design visits. I could tell Tom really enjoyed it, and, sure enough, he was soon off to do his own design work. In general, Tom loved the outdoors—fishing and hunting were his specialties.
As a golfer, Tom should be considered as one of the best. He might be one of the four or five most talented players I’ve ever seen, and certainly one of the top ball strikers. Tall, natural,
As I reflect on this 50th anniversary of Muirfield Village Golf Club opening, I am reminded why I designed and built Muirfield Village—to serve as a gift to my Central Ohio home. In that same spirit, we created the Memorial Tournament two years later as a gift to all the golf- and sports-loving patrons like you.
While we celebrate the club’s past, we usher in a new era here at the Memorial Tournament with a designation by the PGA TOUR as a Signature Event, in which we are pleased to welcome a smaller, elite field of the game’s best players.
Thank you for again supporting us, and we look forward to a truly wonderful week!
Good golfing,
JACK NICKLAUSFounder
and Hostthe Memorial Tournament presented by Workday
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AS WE EMBARK ON OUR THIRD YEAR as presenting sponsor of the Memorial Tournament, Workday looks forward to welcoming back the world’s best golfers and continuing our partnership with Jack and Barbara Nicklaus to further the Memorial’s rich history of incredible charitable impact.
Thanks to the tremendous work of the Nicklaus family establishing this legacy, the Memorial has always been one of the PGA TOUR’s top tournaments. We’re excited to usher in a new era of PGA TOUR events as an official Signature Event and as one of only three player-hosted tournaments among the Signature Events. The Signature Event designation ensures the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday will continue to maintain its legacy as a top-tier event in the world of golf for years to come.
At Workday, a leading provider of solutions to help organizations manage their people and money, we are committed to purpose-driven leadership while working with organizations that create meaningful impact in the communities in which we live and work. We are delighted to reaffirm our support for Stephen and Ayesha Curry’s Oakland, California-based Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation (ELP) and Central Ohio’s Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH). Both organizations continue to drive phenomenal impact through their shared focus of improving the health and well-being of children and their families.
In addition to our steadfast support of ELP and NCH, Workday is proud to continue our support of the incredible veterans in our workforce and the local community. Along with our annual tradition of hosting and recognizing veterans, we look forward to expanding our support of veterans even more this year. We are thrilled to announce that Workday, along with the Memorial Tournament, will be the first event on the PGA TOUR to welcome Folds of Honor Friday. Folds of Honor awards life-changing scholarships to families of fallen or disabled U.S. service members and first responders. In support of this great cause, fans and players are encouraged to wear red, white and blue during Friday’s round.
Workday would also like to recognize the thousands of volunteers that donate their time each year to bring this magnificent Tournament to life. They are the heartbeat of the Tournament, and without them we would not be able to achieve our charitable impact on such a massive scale. Volunteers, we cannot thank you enough!
We are excited to return to Columbus, continuing our commitment to the local community and growing our partnerships in the area. We look forward to seeing you for another amazing week of golf and festivities at this prestigious event!
ANEEL BHUSRI Co-Founder and Executive Chair Workday
WHEN YOU’RE A FATHER of five and grandfather to two, reflecting on what happened at age 10 or 11 can get a little fuzzy. So, forgive me if the memories of those days aren’t as sharp as the photos of my Dad walking the grounds of what would become Muirfield Village Golf Club, with me tagging along behind him. But my thoughts and feelings about my father’s vision and what he created with Muirfield Village are crystal clear.
As we prepare for the 49th playing of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, we pause to celebrate the 50th anniversary of when Muirfield Village Golf Club opened. It was in May 1974 when we unwrapped a gift to Central Ohio—a gift that in many ways changed the world of golf.
To this day, I am in awe of what Jack Nicklaus was able to create. The foresight of my father as a young man was and is phenomenal to me. He has always had a knack for seeing the much larger picture, and Muirfield Village was far from a paint-by-numbers work of art. It’s remarkable to think about the age of Jack Nicklaus when he envisioned Muirfield Village. It was roughly around 1968, and he was 28 years old. And it opened in 1974 when he was 34.
world, he never wanted his fellow PGA TOUR players or anyone to think he was profiting from the club and the Memorial Tournament. So, he gifted the club to the membership, ensuring he would never make a dime off Muirfield Village. He was a young man who thought well beyond his years.
How impressive it was for him to create a stadium golf course built for tournament play before anyone ever thought of such. With all due respect to TPC Sawgrass, it was not the first stadium course. Sawgrass opened in 1980, six years after Muirfield Village and four years after the inaugural playing of the Memorial Tournament.
But my father’s vision goes back much farther. While sitting behind the Augusta National clubhouse with friend Ivor Young at the 1966 Masters, my father envisioned bringing something akin to Augusta National to Greater Columbus. My father always idolized Bob Jones and what Mr. Jones created at Augusta National, and he always kept that blueprint in mind when giving life to Muirfield Village.
Then, when he opened the club, my father mandated that the membership welcome and embrace all nationalities, cultures and religions. So, his first 10 or so members manifested a commitment to diversity. This was from a 34 year old in the early 1970s.
And little known to most, when my father created the club and Tournament that brought in the best players in the
I love the trajectory of the Memorial Tournament. Partnering with Workday Co-Founder and Executive Chair Aneel Bhusri—a visionary and lover of the game—our commitment to charity is stronger than ever. Last year’s Memorial raised over $4.9 million, including $4.6 million for our collaborating charitable partners, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Stephen and Ayesha Curry’s Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation and the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation. Through 2023, the Memorial has eclipsed $52 million in charitable giving, with nearly $37 million going to Nationwide Children’s, our primary beneficiary since 1976. We are also entering a new era of the Memorial, as we join the likes of Tiger Woods’ Genesis Invitational and the Arnold Palmer Invitational as PGA TOUR Signature Events. Tiger, Mr. Palmer and my father each contributed greatly to shaping this game, and each deserves to be honored with these significant events on the PGA TOUR. This year, you will see a smaller field made up of the world’s best golfers, competing for a Memorial-record purse.
While our status changes, our mission and our DNA have not. That DNA includes having the most amazing collection of volunteers of any event in golf.
The onus has been and always will be on our family and the Memorial Tournament leadership to make certain that while we are showcased on a global stage, our event doesn’t lose its roots, its local flavor or its commitment to Central Ohio charities, and that we continue to embrace our storied history. After all, Muirfield Village Golf Club was a gift back to Central Ohio 50 years ago, and a gift we will always cherish.
JACK NICKLAUS II General Chairman
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With support from the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday and
children find fun in making physical activity part of their daily routine
BY BOB BAPTISTNYLAH WADE was teased for years by some classmates at her Lewis Center elementary school. Her cheeks were big, they told her. She was short. She had curly hair.
“Her self-image was put through the wringer,” said her mother DiAnna.
By the sixth grade, Nylah also was gaining weight at an alarming rate. “I was a couch potato,” she said. “I’d watch TV, eat food and play on my laptop.”
If friends showed up to play outside, Nylah would join them for about five minutes, get tired and return to the couch. Three years ago, her pediatrician diagnosed her as prediabetic. She was subsequently referred to Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Play Strong, a medically supervised wellness program that uses game-playing to show kids that exercise can be fun. Nylah didn’t want to try it.
“I was like, ‘What’s the point?’ I thought it was a waste of my time [and wasn’t] going to help me at all,” she said.
Instead, it changed her life.
Thank you for generously supporting the Memorial Tournament Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Center for Perinatal Research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
With your support, our physicians and scientists are working hand-in-hand to save the tiniest of premature babies. And what we learn through our research discoveries here is helping newborns everywhere. As America’s largest neonatal care and research network, you make it possible for us to give families what they need most. Hope. Visit us at NationwideChildrens.org
The tie-in between Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation has been part of a natural charitable evolution for the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday and its special relationship with the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation.
Play Strong was started at Nationwide Children’s in 2012 by Travis Gallagher, the functional rehabilitation coordinator in its Sports Medicine department. He began with a handful of cancer survivors who needed exercise to aid their recovery.
“Then other [departments] started saying, ‘Well, we have kids that need to move more, too. Can we send them to you?’ ” Gallagher said. “We found that there are very few diagnoses in the hospital that movement or physical activity wouldn’t benefit them.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Play Strong was serving 100 to 200 patients a year, Gallagher said. After continuing via Zoom through the pandemic, “We’re now seeing over 400 kids a year, and it continues to rise.”
That’s why Workday’s sponsorship of the Memorial Tournament, which began in 2022, has been a godsend for Play Strong. One of the new charitable beneficiaries of the Tournament is a Workday partner, the Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation started in 2019 by four-time NBA champion and twotime MVP Stephen Curry and entrepreneur, host and two-time New York Times best-selling author Ayesha Curry. Its mission is
supporting the well-being of children in Oakland, California, the Currys’ adopted hometown, by giving them access to nutritious meals, quality reading resources and opportunities to play and be active.
Since its launch, Eat. Learn. Play. has raised more than $52 million for its programs in Oakland. Its first two years as a beneficiary of the Memorial Tournament have resulted in it designating more than $1 million to Play Strong and three other Nationwide Children’s programs focused on nutrition and reading.
The tie-in between Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation has been part of a natural charitable evolution for the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday and its special relationship with the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation.
“When we started Eat. Learn. Play., the emphasis on Play definitely came from Stephen and his passion for physical activity and youth sports,” said Chris Helfrich, President and CEO of the foundation. “His approach to Play was not around how we can create the next generation of great athletes; it was
We’re big fans of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday.
We’re big fans of the Memorial Tournament
presented by Workday.
We’re big fans of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday.
When an event like the Memorial Tournament brings the community together, we take notice. Thank you to everyone for your hard work and dedication, from all of us at Huntington. Your efforts are inspirational.
When an event like the Memorial Tournament brings the community together, we take notice. Thank you to everyone for your hard work and dedication, from all of us at Huntington. Your efforts are inspirational.
When an event like the Memorial Tournament brings the community together, we take notice. Thank you to everyone for your hard work and dedication, from all of us at Huntington. Your efforts are inspirational.
understanding that physical activity plays such a fundamental part of a healthy childhood. That’s what it’s all about and Play Strong does an incredible job of doing that in the Columbus area.”
Gallagher said that while Play Strong was “doing great” before the involvement of Eat. Learn. Play., the additional funding has helped it spread even more. “We have big plans. Our whole goal … is to increase our reach. We want to be able to reach more kids. We want to improve their short-term quality of life and also their long-term health.”
Play Strong strives to do the same with twice-a-week sessions for 12 weeks in which kids engage in various activities from game-playing to basketball to soccer to riding bikes to taking hikes.
“We’ve found that when kids are playing, their heart rates get higher, and they have more fun. They don’t realize they’re working as hard as if we did exercise,” Gallagher said. “Every week, we
Nylah’s self-confidence and selfesteem increased dramatically after she began participating in Play Strong.
show them a differentway to be active. We mix it up with the idea that maybe they really like one of those things, and when they graduate our program, they may continue [being active]. We try to make physical activity enjoyable, give them ways to be physically active, and give them a road map towards being physically active at least an hour a day.”
Kids starting the program receive inducements to stay with it, including an item of sports or exercise equipment at graduation as well as a $100 “scholarship” to use toward a gym membership or bicycle or anything else that will “help them continue along on their journey,” Gallagher said.
“The more we can get these kids moving, the better their short-term and long-term health are, physical and mental.”
Nylah needed only three classes to change her mind about Play Strong.
Nationwide® was founded on the principle of protecting what’s most important to people. So partnering with an organization focused on protecting the health and potential of children was a natural fit. For more than 60 years, Nationwide has been proud to support Nationwide Children’s Hospital to help ensure that every child has access to quality medical care. Since 2011, our sports sponsorships have raised over $60 million for the hospital.
Together, we are making a difference.
“She came home and was like, ‘Mom, we played basketball, and everybody was making fun of my height and doubting me and I showed them up,’ ” DiAnna recalled. “It was the first time kids actually wanted Nylah on their team.”
“It sparked my confidence,” Nylah said.
In the years since, doctors have diagnosed Nylah’s height and weight irregularities as the result of her pituitary gland failing to produce sufficient growth hormones. She now receives weekly injections, and because of that, “She has to maintain being active and working out,” her mother said.
“So Play Strong has really set us up [perfectly] because we’ve got a lot of cool [activities] for the family. Last summer, [Nylah] was outdoors every day. We had cousins over, friends
over, biking, roller skating, fishing, everything.”
Nylah, now 14, said she rarely plays video games anymore. When she’s not with her friends or doing homework, you might find her in competitive cheerleading at a local recreation center.
“We can’t say enough about the Play Strong program,” DiAnna said, “because it not only laid a foundation for [being more active], but it also encouraged and helped her self-esteem and self-image. It was like night and day for her.” MT
Bob Baptist retired from The Columbus Dispatch in 2015 after 37 years as the newspaper’s golf writer. He covered every Memorial Tournament from 1978 through 2014.
in the first years of her life, Sydney Al-Lateef is the 2024 recipient of the Nicklaus Youth Spirit Award. Begun in 2011, the award recognizes a Nationwide Children’s Hospital patient who has overcome adversity and inspired others. Sydney was honored May 1 at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday’s annual Legends Luncheon presented by Nationwide with an introduction by Jack and Barbara Nicklaus.
Born prematurely at 32 weeks, Sydney was diagnosed with hyperbilirubinemia, which causes jaundice. She also encountered growth delays her first year. At age 4, Sydney fought what seemed like a chronic cold, became feverish, and developed a rash on her chest and back. Her tongue became red and swollen, the skin on her hands and feet peeled, and her mood changed.
She was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease, an inflammation of the body’s blood vessels. Sydney was given the only treatment available, an intravenous immunoglobulin. Slowly, her condition improved, and her effervescent personality returned. Two years later, she and her parents were told further check-ups were not necessary because there was no evidence of heart damage.
Now 12, Sydney is involved in the performing arts and has a gift for reciting poetry. She has participated in The First Tee and has appeared on the television show “Little Big Shots.” —BB
Led by JACK AND BARBARA NICKLAUS and continuing a long- held tradition, all of us at THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY WORKDAY
would like to respectfully recognize all active, retired, reserve and veteran military personnel, Ohio National Guard, Gold Star Families, and all levels of law enforcement, Fire/EMS personnel and other first responders for your dedicated service to our country and our communities. We are indebted to you and your families for your lifelong commitment to protect and serve others daily.
SPECIAL THANKS TO
THE CAPTAINS CLUB, an international group of authorities on the game of golf, has advised on the constitution and conduct of the Memorial Tournament since its inception in 1976. One of the Captains’ primary tasks is to select the person or persons in whose honor the Memorial Tournament is played each year. For this year’s 49th Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, they have selected Juli Inkster and Tom Weiskopf. All members of the Captains Club give of their time on an honorary basis, and, as always, Memorial Founder and Host Jack Nicklaus and the Executive Committee are grateful for their contributions to the Tournament’s success.
Mollie Marcoux Samaan COMMISSIONER, LPGA TOUR Jay Monahan COMMISSIONER, PGA TOUR
Martin Slumbers CEO, R&A Seth Waugh CEO, PGA OF AMERICA
RETIRED CAPTAIN
H. Colin MacLaine
DECEASED CAPTAINS
Sellers Shy PRODUCER, CBS SPORTS
Mike Whan CEO, USGA
W. Ronald Alexander • Peter Alliss • John D. Ames
J. Paul Austin • William C. Battle • Peggy Kirk Bell
Sir Michael Bonallack • The Honorable George H. W. Bush
William C. Campbell • Sir John Carmichael
James Ray Carpenter • Howard L. Clark
Sir Sean Connery • Bing Crosby • Joseph C. Dey Jr.
Charles Evans Jr. • The Honorable Gerald R. Ford
William Ward Foshay • Isaac B. Grainger • James Grimm
Hord Hardin • Jay Hebert • Totten P. Heffelfinger
Bob Hope • Frederick E. Jones • George H. Love
David Marr • Gerald H. Micklem • John D. Montgomery Sr.
Byron Nelson • Will F. Nicholson Jr. • James L. O’Keefe
Arnold Palmer • William J. Patton • Eugene Pullia
Bernard H. Ridder Jr. • Clifford Roberts
Gene Sarazen • Harton S. Semple • Sir Iain Stewart
Philip H. Strubing • F. Morgan Taylor Jr. • Richard S. Taylor
Robert W. Willits • Herbert Warren Wind • John W. Winters Jr.
Jack Nicklaus congratulates Larry Nelson, the 2023 Memorial Tournament Honoree, at last year’s Honoree Ceremony.
PAUL AZINGER
Winner in 1993 of the Memorial and the PGA Championship; winning 2008 U.S. Ryder Cup captain.
JIM FURYK
Winner of 17 PGA TOUR titles, including the 2002 Memorial Tournament and 2003 U.S. Open.
CHARLES S. MECHEM JR. Former Commissioner of the LPGA (1990-95); now holds title of Commissioner Emeritus.
JUDY BELL
Former President of the USGA (1996-97); past captain and player for U.S. Curtis Cup team.
DR. TREY HOLLAND Former President of the USGA (2000-02).
BARBARA NICKLAUS
Recognized as the “First Lady of Golf”; tireless supporter for charitable causes, primarily children’s health care.
GARY PLAYER
Hall of Fame golfer from South Africa with nine majors; one of five to win career grand slam; winner of more than 150 events globally.
JUDY RANKIN
Winner of 26 LPGA tournaments and Hall of Fame golfer; ground-breaking television golf analyst.
ANEEL BHUSRI
Co-Founder and Executive Chair of Workday, presenting sponsor of the Memorial Tournament.
JULI INKSTER
Hall of Fame golfer with 31 LPGA wins, including seven major titles.
JACK W. NICKLAUS II General Chairman of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday; Golf course designer
FRED S. RIDLEY Chairman of Augusta National Golf Club; 1975 U.S. Amateur champion and former President of the USGA (2004-05).
O. GORDON BREWER JR.
Former Chairman of Pine Valley Golf Club; two-time U.S. Senior Amateur champion.
HALE IRWIN Hall of Famer with three U.S. Open titles; two-time winner of the Memorial Tournament.
STEVEN C. NICKLAUS President of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday.
JOHANN RUPERT Chairman of the South African Tour and Chairman of the South African Golf Development Board.
A.S. (SANDY) DAWSON Past Captain of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews (2013-14).
TONY JACKLIN 1969 British Open and 1970 U.S. Open champion; member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
ANDY NORTH 1978 and 1985 U.S. Open champion; television golf analyst for ESPN.
CAROL SEMPLE THOMPSON Accomplished amateur player and former member of the USGA Executive Committee.
TIM FINCHEM
Former Commissioner of the PGA TOUR (1994-2016); 2022 inductee to the World Golf Hall of Fame.
KEN LINDSAY Former President of the PGA of America (1997-98).
HISAMITSU OHNISHI
Former Vice Chairman of the Japan Golf Tour Organization; leader in the development of Japan’s professional golf tour.
TOM WATSON Hall of Fame golfer and eight-time major champion; two-time Memorial winner; ardent supporter of junior golf programs.
Sunscreen is one of our most important tools for reducing skin cancer risk, but not all products are the same.
These tips from Ohio State skin cancer experts won’t improve your golf game, but they could help you stay safe in the sun when you’re on the course this spring and summer.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are diagnosed with skin cancer each year in the U.S., including approximately 76,000 cases of melanoma, the deadliest form of the disease.
Fortunately, there are easy ways to significantly reduce your chances of developing skin cancer without the need to avoid golfing, grilling or other outdoor activities. Here are some prevention practices you can use to have fun in the sun without sacrificing skin safety.
When choosing between sunscreens, FDA experts recommend brands that contain titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, two ingredients that meet the organization’s GRASE (generally recognized as safe and effective) classification.
“Applying sunscreen that is regulated and approved is a very effective way to protect yourself from skin cancer,” says Tarek Haykal, MD, an oncologist and researcher at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center –James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC –James). “I would urge everyone to stay protected and apply sunscreen when they are exposed to the sun.”
Titanium dioxide and zinc oxide protect users by blocking the sun’s harmful UV rays, causing them to reflect off the skin. Plus, because they’re minerals and not chemicals, they can reduce the risk of non-cancerous skin irritations that can arise from the use of some other sunscreens.
While the right sunscreen – applied the right way – can greatly reduce the risk of skin cancer, it’s not 100 percent effective at blocking UV rays. To provide an extra layer of protection, wear sun protective clothing and seek shade when possible.
Many of us grew up believing that tans are the safe side of sun exposure. But, while they may not cause the immediate pain of sunburns, tans are signs from our skin that something is wrong.
“The tanning of your skin is a sign of your skin cells desperately trying to protect themselves from further cancer-inducing damage from the sun’s ultraviolet rays,” says Alisha Plotner, MD, a dermatologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
This might surprise many people who believe that tanning can actually help prevent skin damage by conditioning the skin to better absorb UV rays. This “base tan” myth is widespread, but can lead to dangerous consequences if put into practice.
“There’s really no way to tan safely,” Plotner says. “Even if some of us like to think of tanned skin as healthy, it’s a sign of skin damage.”
Those who want the look of a tan without the UV exposure can turn to “sunless” products, which interact with surface skin cells to simulate the effects of tanning. While sunless tanners can provide a desired result without skin cancer risk, users should take care to avoid potential side effects.
“The main concern regarding artificial tanning products is with inhaling that product or getting it in other mucous membranes, so be sure to cover your eyes, nose and mouth during a spray tan,” Plotner says.
Don’t believe the “sunscreen truther” myths
Social media has given rise to a number of health-related conspiracy theories, including some spread by so-called sunscreen truthers. These people claim that UV rays are actually beneficial and that sunscreen – despite well-documented evidence to the contrary – is harmful.
But, as is the case with a lot of online health misinformation, it’s the falsehood that can be harmful – even fatal – if believed.
“I’m here to tell you that exposure to UV light, especially during peak sun times, is very dangerous,” Haykal says. “It can cause serious skin damage, including predisposition to a lot of skin cancers that can be very hard to treat.”
To avoid falling victim to this type of misinformation, make sure to seek out health info from reputable sources with histories of trusted, verified expertise.
“Please seek out websites from entities such as the OSUCCC –James, the FDA or other sources that can be trusted, and do not rely on social media word of mouth or misinformation,” Haykal says.
Scan the QR code to learn more about skin cancer, including risks, symptoms and treatment options at the OSUCCC – James.
Mindy, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma survivor and Cancer Diagnostic Center patient.
The best outcomes for treating cancer come from early detection – and early diagnosis. The James Cancer Diagnostic Center at Ohio State is designed to provide rapid evaluation and a clear diagnosis. We’re transforming care by giving patients direct access to cancer experts who study and treat cancer every day. If you suspect you have cancer, the choice is clear. Choose The James Cancer Diagnostic Center. Visit, cancer.osu.edu/diagnosticcenter.
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories celebrating the first members of the Captains Club of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday.
BOB JONES is the face of the franchise. The spirit of the great amateur, his integrity and dignity radiates from each blade of manicured turf at Augusta National Golf Club. It was Jones who worked with Alister Mackenzie to transform a flower and tree nursery into a pristine golf property. The impeccable name and formidable presence of Jones remains part and parcel to the canvas.
But co-founder Clifford Roberts’ legacy in golf lies precariously between architect and autocrat, visionary and absolutist. The man most responsible for the development of the iconic club and its extraordinary championship exists largely in the liner notes.
Born on a farm in Morning Sun, Iowa, in 1894, Roberts came from humble beginnings. He was the second of five children of Charles DeClifford Roberts Sr., whose entrepreneurial pursuits led his family to a nomadic manner of life. When he was 19 years old, Clifford Roberts’ mother, dispirited by illnesses and constant upheaval, took her own life with a shotgun, an episode that would have tragic reverberations.
By the mid-1920s, the resourceful young Roberts made his way to New York where, despite a limited education (ninth grade), he realized success as a financier and investment broker. At the same time, he made the acquaintance of Jones, whose persona and achievements Roberts greatly admired.
“It seemed that this land had been lying here for years waiting for someone to lay a golf course upon it.”
—BOB JONES
When Jones spoke of his desire to build a golf club, Roberts identified the former Fruitland Nurseries in Augusta, Georgia—145 miles south of Jones’ Atlanta home—as a promising natural setting. Jones would later write: “It seemed that this land had been lying here for years waiting for someone to lay a golf course upon it.”
The two men purchased the 365-acre property for $70,000 in 1931, the year after Jones won the grand slam, the “impregnable quadrilateral,” and retired from competitive golf.
For the celebrated Jones, who could hardly cross a street without drawing a crowd, the new Augusta National Golf
Club would be a place of refuge where he could mingle with friends and associates, secluded from the spotlight. For Roberts, the astute businessman, it was a place to cultivate clients, to kibitz with the influential and affluent.
Jones had a sanctuary. Roberts, who steered the club through financial hardships more than once, had a platform. When the duo decided to conduct an annual event, the deferential Jones insisted it be called “The Augusta National
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Invitational Tournament,” a title applied to its inaugural playing in 1934. By 1939, the pragmatic Roberts had his way, and the more ostentatious title, “Masters Tournament,” was adopted.
The Masters is a singular golf championship, the only major conducted annually at the same venue, replete with attributes that make it “unlike any other.” From the absence of corporate tents to egg salad sandwiches to limited television commercials, Roberts enforced a less-is-more creed and comportment that is non-negotiable.
In 1976, the 82-year-old Roberts stepped aside after 45 years as club chairman. A year later, stricken with cancer and debilitated by a stroke, he decided to orchestrate his own exodus, choosing to end his life. Augusta National and its iconic tournament owe much of their pastel charm and cultural stature to his inspiration and energy. The Masters is arguably the most famous and popular event in golf. It was no surprise that Memorial Tournament Founder and Host Jack Nicklaus invited Roberts to join the first assemblage of the Captains Club.
“Mr. Roberts set the tone for tournament golf with the
Masters,” Nicklaus said upon Roberts’ death. “The standard and quality with which he conducted the Masters are unmatched anywhere.” MT
Dan O’Neill is a former feature writer and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He is the author of seven books.
TOP: (from left) Byron Nelson, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ben Hogan and Clifford Roberts pose for a photo in 1953.
ABOVE: The winner’s Presentation Ceremony at the 1965 Masters included (standing) Gary Player, winner Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and (seated) Augusta National co-founders Bob Jones and Clifford Roberts.
Scan for golf news & event info, recipes, merch drops, and more surprises for the green.
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MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT HONOREE
For those who say you can’t have it all,
IT WAS ONLY ONE MOMENT among a million in golf for Juli Inkster, and yet it captured so much of who she is.
Inkster was in the twilight of her career—a term used loosely for someone with her endless passion to compete—when at age 47 she was in the thick of contention on the back nine. At stake was a chance to become the LPGA Tour’s oldest winner. She was battling with Paula Creamer, slightly older than Inkster’s own daughter. The real opponent was her putter. So when Inkster left a 30-foot birdie attempt some 5 feet short of the hole, she wandered off the side of the green, turned her back and appeared to be engaged in an animated conversation with a tree.
At the back of the green stood her caddie, Worth Blackwelder, watching this unfold with a grim expression.
“My player wants it so bad that she’s trying too hard,” Blackwelder whispered in his rich Carolina accent. “I told her back on the tee, ‘Juli, this is easy. Think of something hard you’ve done in your life, like having two kids.’ She looked at me and said, ‘Worth, I’d rather be in labor right now.’ ”
The grind. The high standards. The competition. The children. Above all, her children.
PORTRAIT BY GLENN HARRINGTON
That Sunday at Cedar Ridge in Tulsa, Oklahoma, did not end favorably for Inkster. She poured in an 18-foot birdie putt on the final hole to force a playoff, only for Creamer to beat her with a birdie on the second playoff hole. As it turned out, the last of her 31 titles on the LPGA came two years earlier, adding to her seven major championships, the career Grand Slam, a spot in the World Golf Hall of Fame and the Bob Jones Award, the USGA’s highest honor.
All the while, she gave equal time, equal effort, equal intensity to being the wife of a PGA professional and the mother of two daughters. Which is why she was making French toast for Hayley and Cori on the Sunday morning of the 1999 LPGA Championship before going out to DuPont Country Club and producing an eagle-birdie-birdie finish to pull away and become only the fourth woman at the time with the career Grand Slam.
There was that time Cori’s fever spiked in Portland. Inkster took her to the emergency room, and her temperature finally came down about three hours before her 8:30 a.m. tee time. Inkster doesn’t remember what she shot that day. Odds are it was one of the few times it didn’t matter to her.
The best American LPGA player of her generation or a Hall of Fame mother?
The latter is what made Inkster’s voice crack when she was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame and said, “The pride of our lives is not the Grand Slam or the trophies. It’s our two daughters. We never thought we could love two people as much as we love them. I want to thank them for letting me be their mother and letting me do what I love to do. And that’s play a little golf.”
What made it so personal, and at times so conflicting, was her background. Her father was a fireman who worked other jobs on his days away from the station. Her mom stayed at home, raising Inkster and two brothers. They were never apart. Being a tour professional doesn’t allow for such a lifestyle, and Inkster was determined as ever to make it work. And she did.
“I take more pride in traveling and playing and having kids. And not only having kids, being able to share it with them,” she said. “They were old enough to know what I did. They saw a lot of my wins and Solheim Cups. They knew how
much golf meant and how hard I worked. And it rubbed off on them. They’re super hard workers. They’re great with people. I just figured if I was going to do this, I was going to do it as a mom, and be a viable mom.”
Away from the LPGA Tour, she coached basketball (remarkably getting only one technical foul for arguing with refs). She volunteered in the school library. She had hot meals on the table and hosted sleepovers. She was a chaperone on field trips.
“I didn’t want to be Juli the golfer,” she said. “I wanted to be Hayley’s and Cori’s mom.”
And she could play a little golf. For her excellence on the course and contributions off it, Inkster has been chosen Honoree for the 49th edition of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. The award seems quite appropos considering that Workday is presenting sponsor of an award in Inkster’s name—the Juli Inkster Award, given to the topranked female golfer who has completed her fourth year of eligibility.
As to her accomplishments juggling mom and golf duties, Inkster won 13 times and three majors before Hayley was born. She won twice in the four years until Cori was born, and then she won 16 times and four more majors to finish out a remarkable career.
“She really had two different careers,” said her husband
Although Juli Inkster didn’t take up golf until she was 15 years old, she earned a spot on her high school’s boys golf team and then was given a scholarship to San Jose State University.
Brian, the head professional at Los Altos Country Club in California.
That golf was not in her DNA from the start is only shocking because of the location. Inkster, who was into just about every sport, grew up in a house along the 14th fairway at Pasatiempo Golf Club, the magnificent Alister Mackenzie design in Santa Cruz, California. And yet no one in the house played golf. Imagine living on the North Shore of Oahu and never going to the beach. Even picking up a club for the first time required a twist of fate.
“At 15 we had to get jobs,” Inkster said. “My oldest brother worked in a liquor store stocking shelves, and my other brother got a job working in golf course maintenance. One of my friends worked up there at the club, and that’s how I got into golf.”
She also saw enough cute guys that she figured it would be a good place to hang out and earn some cash by parking carts and picking the range.
“The pro shop was pretty close, and so I got some clubs from the back room,” Inkster recalls. “They were nice enough to give me some lessons. I improved pretty quickly, and that was it.”
She makes it all sound so simple. The golf took a lot of work. As for those cute guys? “I married one of them,” Inkster said with a laugh.
Brian Inkster gave PGA TOUR Q-school one shot. He went to work as an assistant pro at a club that made it feel like a thankless job. He tried the insurance business and was miserable. Golf was his passion, and as he left his brief stint in insurance, one of his colleagues (a scratch player) recommended he meet with English swing instructor Leslie King.
Brian took a two-month sabbatical to visit him before taking over at Pasatiempo. And then he started working with the girl who would become his wife. She was good enough to be invited to play on the boys golf team at Harbor High School and earn a scholarship to San Jose State. She was 20 when they married in 1980, and the honeymoon was going great except for the mention of golf.
The U.S. Women’s Amateur was at Prairie Dunes. Inkster was happily married and willing to sit this one out.
“We drove up to western Canada, went from Vancouver to Banff, a two-week drive,” Brian said. “We didn’t play any golf. She was going to leave for the Amateur and she said, ‘I don’t feel ready.’ She stunned me by saying that. I said,
Juli met her future husband Brian at Pasatiempo Golf Club, and the couple wed when she was 20 years old.
And then she won another U.S. Women’s Amateur. And another. No one had ever won three straight U.S. Amateurs, male or female. Not Bob Jones. Not Jack Nicklaus. Tiger Woods famously won three in a row. He was only 6 when Inkster got her hat trick of Amateurs.
‘Don’t you dare. Your parents will kill me.’ They had sent the entry in two months before we got married. I said, ‘Juli, you have to play.’ ”
She practiced for a few days when they got home— by then, Brian had left Pasatiempo and was the head pro at Los Altos—and then Inkster headed to Kansas. She was a bundle of nerves, and not only because of the golf.
“I hadn’t been married a month, and I already lost my wedding ring,” she said.
Luckily, the ring was found in the parking lot. She worked her way through qualifying, getting a little better in each of the
TOP: Inkster (fourth from left) was a member of the winning 1982 U.S. Curtis Cup team, posting a record of 4-0. ABOVE: Inkster won the 1980 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Prairie Dunes, her first of three in a row.
“They had a plaque that says, ‘Tiger Woods, the only player to win three U.S. Amateurs in a row.’ I get a sheet of paper and I write, ‘Male.’ And then I wrote that Juli Inkster won three Amateurs in a row, I put that over the plaque. The next day [the plaque] was gone.”
—MEG MALLON
matches and beat Carole Semple Thompson in the semifinals, but not before needing treatment on the back nine for an insect bite while retrieving her ball from a plum bush. In the final against the hottest amateur in the summer of 1980, she took down Patti Rizzo.
And then she won another U.S. Women’s Amateur. And another. No one had ever won three straight U.S. Amateurs, male or female. Not Bob Jones. Not Jack Nicklaus. Tiger Woods famously won three in a row. He was only 6 when Inkster got her hat trick of Amateurs.
“She was Tiger before there was Tiger,” Beth Daniel said. “I don’t think she gets enough credit for that.”
Meg Mallon recalls being at Pumpkin Ridge in 1997 for the U.S. Women’s Open, the site of Woods’ third straight U.S. Amateur win.
“They had a plaque that says, ‘Tiger Woods, the only player to win three U.S. Amateurs in a row.’ I get a sheet of paper and I write, ‘Male.’ And then I wrote that Juli Inkster won three Amateurs in a row,” Mallon said. “I put that over the plaque. The next day [the plaque] was gone.”
Inkster had made a name for herself. Along with those three straight U.S. Women’s Amateurs, she won the California Amateur and went 4-0 in the Curtis Cup (in which none of her matches went 18 holes). Still, she was a relative newcomer. She had started playing only seven years earlier, remarkable in its own right.
And then there was LPGA Q-school. The LPGA had two editions in 1983, Florida in January and Texas in August. Inkster, despite coming off a third straight U.S. Amateur, didn’t
make it past the first attempt amid challenging conditions and a youthful mistake. She didn’t lose her wedding ring, only her contact lens.
“Brutal week,” said Brian, who caddied for her. “Who changes their contact lens when the wind is blowing? We looked for it a little bit. She didn’t have another one in the bag, so I gave the bag to someone in the gallery.”
He rushed back to their hotel and got a ticket for speeding. What a week. And the recovery wasn’t easy. This was the most celebrated amateur in women’s golf, and she couldn’t make it out of Q-school. Inkster eventually gathered herself, determined as always, and headed to Texas to try again in August. She was co-medalist.
Five starts later, she won her first LPGA tournament in the Safeco Classic when Kathy Whitworth missed a 4-foot par putt on the last hole. Her first full season was even better. Inkster won her first major at the Nabisco Dinah Shore in a playoff over Pat Bradley. The next victory of her rookie
Inkster’s first win on the LPGA Tour was the 1983 Safeco Classic, shown here with the previous year’s winner, Patty Sheehan.
season also was a major, the du Maurier Classic over Ayako Okamoto. In fact, her first five wins were over players now in the Hall of Fame.
And then Hayley was born in early 1990. Two months after giving birth, Inkster tied for 11th in the Nabisco Dinah Shore. It wasn’t until July of the following year that she won again, and then it was a full year before the next win. Cori was born in the spring of 1994, and then Inkster wasn’t winning at all. She was a mother who had questions about how she was supposed to work and play.
“Down at the lesson tee at Los Altos, half the conversation was about Hayley and the other half was Juli’s golf swing,” Brian said.
They had pledged never to be apart for more than two weeks at a time and lived up to that, though it became tougher when the girls came along. The couple had mutual respect for the demands of their jobs.
“It was difficult at times,” Brian said. “In the summertime, it’s long days. I would say, ‘Juli, I can’t come out. It’s
my nine-hole Ladies Invitation. It doesn’t sound big to you, but to those 40 women, it’s big.’ I took my job seriously, and they [Los Altos] were good to us. They let me travel with Juli. I never felt any pressure from Juli or from my membership to stay home. But I felt as a PGA pro I had to be there most of the time. That’s my job. Sitting here now, it worked.”
HAYLEY AND CORI were growing, and “Jimmy Brown” was rolling.
“Because of the kids—and caddies didn’t fly around that much—she had this big van, a brown Aerostar,” said Greg Johnston, her caddie for the majority of the second stage of her career. “We nicknamed it ‘Jimmy Brown’ because it would keep on running. I would drive this van all over the place with toys, kitchen stuff. She would stay at a Residence Inn so she could cook for the kids. I got to watch the girls grow up. They were in my wedding. They’re as close as family.”
Johnston was on the bag for 17 of her wins, including the biggest—her first U.S. Women’s Open in 1999 at Old Waverly, a second U.S. Women’s Open when she took down Annika Sörenstam in 2002, back-to-back in the LPGA Championship and the Solheim Cups.
Cori is now 30 and living with her husband in the San Diego area. Hayley is 33, married and living in northern California.
“I’ve seen people who had children and what that did to their careers. It’s not easy to do. Any player will tell you that because all of a sudden, your mental focus is not 100 percent,”
ABOVE: Inkster teaming with her longtime caddie Greg Johnston.
LEFT: Host Dinah Shore looks on as Inkster holds the trophy after winning the 1984 Nabisco Dinah Shore tournament in a playoff.
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Johnston said. “Juli had to pull out of a tournament when Cori ran and fell and got stitches in her chin up in Seattle. All the things that can happen on the road. She did a lot of great things in golf. Personally, it’s more impressive what she did while having kids.
“She was a mom first, every step of the way,” he said. “And when it came time to do the golf stuff, she put everything into it.”
That wasn’t a smooth transition. It was around those
“She was a mom first, every step of the way, and when it came time to do the golf stuff, she put everything into it.” —GREG JOHNSTON
hours on the range at Los Altos, when the conversation went from golf swing to preschool options for Hayley, that a change was in order. Practice time was more father-mother than instructor-player. And the more Inkster thought about her own upbringing and how her mother was always there, the selfdoubt increased, especially when the results were not there for validation.
“I was not doing very good at the golf thing. I didn’t think I was doing any good at the Mommy thing. And I always [stunk] at the wife thing,” Inkster once said. “I felt like I wasn’t doing anything great.”
She decided to work with renowned instructor Mike McGetrick, whom she had known through his work with Mallon and others. Brian also thought it was a good idea, for no other reason than a fresh set of eyes. Inkster, however, needed to be certain there would be a road back to playing as well as she did before kids.
“I remember the frustration. I remember the talk, ‘Can I do this?’ And that was coming from somebody who is one of the best in women’s golf,” McGetrick said. “I knew Juli because I was out on tour, but I didn’t know her well. Once we sat down and visited, I told her what my process was. I felt she could do both—be a mom and compete, but most importantly compete and win.”
Among the lessons was getting her to understand she could win without her best golf. Inkster loves to practice, loves to perfect.
“It’s clear to me that some people love golf and love to practice, and she’s one of those,” said Hall of Famer Judy Rankin, the 2019 Memorial Honoree. “I don’t believe there’s one aspect of the game she doesn’t love. And she does it when she’s all by herself. She plays with whoever asks her to play. And it’s fun to know somebody like that. The game beats us up pretty bad along the way. She gets beat up almost daily, but she gets over it real fast.”
She usually gets over it with a short game that makes up for a lot of mistakes. “Trash Queen” is a popular nickname among her peers. Most of them have witnessed Inkster’s determination and drive with fond—and occasionally hilarious— memories.
“Beth and I were playing with her in Nashville one year,” Mallon said. “Nashville had this beautiful display of flowers in front of a par 3. Juli hits a cold shank right into the concession stand—she could do that sometimes —and she’s so mad she takes her club and pummels all the flowers, all the way down there.”
“Yeah, I might have lopped a few flowers in Nashville,” Inkster said, though she has a clearer memory of what followed. “I got it up-and-down for par.”
“Beth and I two-putt for par,” Mallon said. “Juli got up-and-down and all she said was, ‘We tied.’ ”
That second career to which her husband referred had some of her greatest moments, none bigger in Inkster’s view than Old Waverly in Mississippi for the U.S. Women’s Open.
All those years later, through the birth of her second child and the grind it took with McGetrick to get her game back
ABOVE AND RIGHT: Inkster won her first U.S. Women’s Open in 1999 at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Mississippi.
in working order, she never quite got over a playoff loss to Patty Sheehan at Oakmont in the 1992 U.S. Women’s Open. Sheehan birdied the last two holes with one massive break on the 18th—her tee shot found the rough, but being in casual water, she was given relief in the fairway, hit 5-iron to 18 feet and holed the birdie putt to force a playoff. Sheehan won by two the next day.
Inkster finally got her due in 1999 when she took down Kelli Kuehne, making her a U.S. Open champion at long last. Her final shot safely on the green, she looked into the camera and delivered a memorable message to Hayley and Cori. “Mom is bringing home the trophy—a real big one, too.”
Three weeks later, after taking them for ice cream on Saturday night and cooking French toast the next morning, she served up a career Grand Slam.
And then she came full circle at Prairie Dunes, where 22 years earlier she won the U.S. Women’s Amateur she didn’t want to play.
Annika Sörenstam was at the peak of her powers when Inkster closed with a 66 in the 2002 U.S. Women’s Open
TOP: An excited Inkster reacts to sinking a 35-foot birdie putt during a fourball match at Muirfield Village Golf Club in the 1998 Solheim Cup.
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(she took only 25 putts each of the final two rounds) to win by two. She joined Babe Zaharias as the only women over 40 to win a major, and it was validation—not that she needed it by then—that she could have it all. A Hall of Fame player. A Hall of Fame mother of two daughters. A family that stayed intact, even if wasn’t as traditional as Inkster experienced or expected. She made it work.
“It took until Hayley was 2 when I realized that as long as she’s with me, it doesn’t matter,” she said.
Competition comes wherever she can find it these days. Inkster spends the winter months at a home in Palm Springs— “I’m the only one dumb enough to pay taxes on two houses
in California,” she says—where she plays a little and practices a lot, along with a few games of bocce and pickle ball. She typically plays with the men but joined a ladies’ group last fall and shot 60 from the forward tees.
“We were playing ‘birdie juice.’ You take a shot after every birdie. I was feeling no pain coming down the stretch,” Inkster said. And when she finished laughing, she added, “My golf competition has changed a lot.”
And now she comes full circle at Muirfield Village Golf Club as one of the Honorees at the Memorial Tournament. Inkster is a member of the Captains Club, and it was at Muirfield Village in 1998 where she delivered one of many
After nearly 20 years and nine appearances as a Solheim Cup competitor, Inkster took the reins as captain of the U.S. team beginning in 2015.
from top left: Inkster congratulates Lizette Salas after she clinched the winning half point to win the 2017 Solheim Cup at Des Moines Golf and Country Club; hoisting the trophy at the 2015 Solheim Cup at the St. Leon course of Golf Club St. Leon-Rot in Germany; celebrating with Salas after her singles victory on day three of the 2019 Solheim Cup at Gleneagles Golf Club in Scotland.
Clockwise
sublime performances in the Solheim Cup. She played a total of nine Solheim Cups, the last one in 2011 at age 51. She lost only one singles match in nine appearances. She has contributed more points than any American. She was captain three times. But one moment that stands out was that four-ball match with Pepper in 1998 when Europe was staging a rally.
With the Europeans in tight, Inkster holed a 35-foot putt, setting off a wild celebration.
Rankin was the U.S. captain, sitting in a cart on a hill to watch. “I had Hayley in the cart with me,” she said. “Juli made a bomb—whenever you see her dancing in those highlights, that was the putt—and it was sheer pandemonium. There must have been 25,000 people watching this one match.”
She recalls Hayley finally catching up to her mother after they won the match and telling her, “Now I know why you do what you do.”
It was the start of those matches, however, that was so poignant, another defining moment in the legacy of Juli Inkster. She was asked to take part in the honor of raising the American flag and she brought both daughters. Hayley helped tug on the rope to raise the flag. Inkster watched, with 4-year-old Cori in her arms.
The best of both worlds.
MT
Doug Ferguson has covered golf for 30 years and has been the lead golf writer for The Associated Press since 1998.
2006 Safeway International
2001 Electrolux USA Championship hosted by Vince Gill and Amy Grant
2006 Safeway International Presented by Coca-Cola
1999 McDonald’s LPGA Championship
2000 Longs Drugs Challenge
2003 LPGA Corning Classic
2002 Chick-fil-A Charity Championship hosted by Nancy Lopez
MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIP VICTORIES
1984 Nabisco Dinah Shore, du Maurier Classic
1989 Nabisco Dinah Shore
1999 U.S. Women’s Open, McDonald’s LPGA Championship
2000 McDonald’s LPGA Championship
2002 U.S. Women’s Open
LPGA TOUR VICTORIES
1983 SAFECO Classic
1985 Lady Keystone Open
1986 Women’s Kemper Open, McDonald’s Championship, Lady Keystone Open, Atlantic City LPGA Classic
1988 Crestar Classic, Atlantic City LPGA Classic, SAFECO Classic
1989 Crestar Classic
1991 LPGA Bay State Classic
1992 JAL Big Apple Classic
1997 Samsung World Championship
1998 Samsung World Championship
1999 Welch’s/Circle K Championship, Longs Drugs Challenge, Safeway LPGA Golf Championship
2000 Longs Drugs Challenge, Samsung World Championship
2001 Electrolux USA Championship hosted by Vince Gill and Amy Grant
2002 Chick-fil-A Charity Championship hosted by Nancy Lopez
2003 LPGA Corning Classic, Evian Masters
2006 Safeway International Presented by Coca-Cola
THE LEGENDS OF THE LPGA TOUR VICTORIES
2015 The Legends Championship
2016 Walgreens Charity Classic, Walgreens Charity Championship
2017 Walgreens Charity Classic
2019 Suquamish Clearwater Legends Cup
2021 Land O’Lakes Legends Classic
AMATEUR VICTORIES
1980 U.S. Women’s Amateur
1981 U.S. Women’s Amateur, California Amateur
1982 U.S. Women’s Amateur
OTHER WINS
1986 JCPenney Classic (with Tom Purtzer)
1990 Spalding Invitational Pro-Am
1996 Diners Club Matches (with Dottie Pepper)
1997 Diners Club Matches (with Dottie Pepper)
1999 Diners Club Matches (with Dottie Pepper)
2000 Hyundai Team Matches (with Dottie Pepper)
2004 Wendy’s 3-Tour Challenge (with Cristie Kerr, Grace Park)
OTHER CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
LPGA Hall of Fame 1999
World Golf Hall of Fame 2000
All-American honors, San Jose State University 1979, ’81, ’82 (Winner of 17 collegiate titles)
California Amateur of the Year 1981
Curtis Cup 1982
World Cup 1980, ’82
Bay Area Athlete of the Year 1982
Broderick Award, Best Collegiate Female (Golf) 1982
San Jose State University Sports Hall of Fame 1982
Female Athlete of the Year, San Jose Sports Assoc. 1985
LPGA Rookie of the Year 1983
Solheim Cup 1992, ’98, 2000, ’02, ’03, ’05, ’07, ’09, ’11
Solheim Cup captain 2015, ’17, ’19
GWAA Female Player of the Year 1999
ESPY Outstanding Women’s Golfer of the Year 2000
LPGA Player Executive Committee 2002-04, 2007-09
The William and Mousie Powell Award 2004, ’15
Patty Berg Award 2009
GWAA ASAP Sports/Jim Murray Award 2009
Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame 2011
Northern Calif. Golf Association Hall of Fame 2017
Bob Jones Award 2022
Tom Weiskopf is remembered not only for his playing ability, but also for his contributions to golf as a course designer and broadcaster
BY DAVID SHEDLOSKIFEW GOLFERS OWNED a more majestic and universally admired swing than Tom Weiskopf, and it’s doubtful many more possessed such a keen golf acumen that was both a blessing and a curse to a player of his immense talent. And although the fiery and outspoken Ohioan might have fallen short of his own lofty expectations, Weiskopf nonetheless carved out an illustrious career that saw him win a major championship before he transitioned into golf course design and television broadcasting.
Weiskopf is being honored posthumously at this week’s 49th edition of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday not far from where he blossomed into the player who went on to win 16 times on the PGA TOUR, including the 1973 Open Championship. Following in the footsteps of Jack Nicklaus at The Ohio State University, Weiskopf starred as an All-American in his one season with the Buckeyes in 1962.
“Unquestionably, the best years of my life were those spent in Columbus, at Ohio State,” Weiskopf once said. “Those years gave me the confidence to become successful.”
PORTRAIT BY GLENN HARRINGTON
“I’ll never forget the first time I played 18 holes, I had a 92. Two months later, it was down in the 70s.”
—TOM WEISKOPF
Given his golf pedigree, Weiskopf was destined to be successful.
Born in Massillon, Ohio, on Nov. 9, 1942, Weiskopf, the oldest of three children, was introduced to the game by his parents, Tom and Eva, who were outstanding golfers in their own right. Tom Sr., a railroad worker, had been a standout amateur in Pennsylvania, while Eva competed in the U.S. Women’s Amateur a number of times—twice, in 1936 and ’38, she lost in match play to future Hall of Famer Patty Berg—and was good enough to play for the men’s teams at the College of Wooster and Mount Union.
Weiskopf was 13 when he began to caddie at Chagrin Valley Country Club in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. A year later, his parents bought him his first set of clubs, and the year after that his father took him to the 1957 U.S. Open at Inverness Club in Toledo, an experience that solidified Weiskopf’s interest in becoming a pro golfer. The youngster was mesmerized watching
the professionals, particularly the smooth, rhythmic action of Sam Snead, and perhaps it was no coincidence that Weiskopf developed a swing that was described as “a mixture of grace and power.”
“I’ll never forget,” Weiskopf wrote in a first-person account in the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer in 1971, “the first time I played 18 holes, I had a 92. Two months later, it was down in the 70s.” He went on to star at Benedictine High School, where he was a threetime state tournament qualifier, and then won the Ohio Jaycees Junior Amateur title in 1960.
Weiskopf earned second-team All-American honors in his sophomore year but did not return to the Buckeyes in the fall. Still, he remained a force in amateur golf, and before turning pro Weiskopf proved his mettle in capturing the 1963 Western Amateur, defeating reigning NCAA champion Dick Sikes in the quarterfinals and U.S. Amateur champion Labron Harris Jr. in the final.
He turned pro in late 1964, and in an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, none other than Nicklaus predicted that Weiskopf would be a success. It took a few years, but Weiskopf broke through for his first victory at the Andy Williams-San Diego Open Invitational in 1968. His biggest
year came in 1973 when he won five times, including the Canadian Open and his lone major championship at The Open Championship at Troon, in Scotland. Weiskopf triumphed in wire-to-wire fashion, defeating reigning U.S. Open champion Johnny Miller and England’s Neil Coles by three strokes. His 12-under 276 total tied Arnold Palmer’s record score from 11 years earlier at Troon. The win came just a few months after his father died.
“My dad lived for my golf,” Weiskopf said at the time. “Two days before he died, he told me that he knew I’d soon win one of the big ones. He would have been proud of me. I couldn’t consider myself a great player until I won a major championship.”
... in an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, none other than Nicklaus predicted that Weiskopf would be a success.
LEFT: Weiskopf was known for a swing described as “a mixture of grace and power.”
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Though he only played sparingly on the PGA TOUR Champions after turning 50, he won four senior titles, most notably the 1995 U.S. Senior Open, winning a showdown against Nicklaus at Congressional. In all, Weiskopf collected 28 professional wins, and he qualified for the U.S. Ryder Cup team three times, but only competed twice, in 1973 and ’75, compiling a 7-2-1 record. He skipped the 1977 matches to go sheep hunting, one of his great passions. His last TOUR victory came at the 1982 Western Open.
After accompanying Nicklaus on a handful of site visits, Weiskopf’s interest in course design was piqued, and he began to transition to a career in architecture in the mid-1980s.
Partnering with Jay Morrish, a Nicklaus protégé, Weiskopf became an acclaimed designer of some 70 courses, including Troon North, TPC Scottsdale, Double Eagle Club (in nearby Galena) and Loch Lomond in Scotland.
TOP: Weiskopf and Jay Morrish designed Double Eagle Club in Galena, which opened in 1992. ABOVE: Weiskopf (left) on site during the construction of Loch Lomond in Scotland, June 1989.
Coca-Cola Consolidated is Proud to Support the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday
“Tom Weiskopf had as much talent as any player I’ve ever seen play the TOUR. He was awfully good for an awfully long time.”
—JACK NICKLAUS
His knowledge of the game and his candor also served him well as a broadcaster for CBS, ABC and ESPN. He was on the call at the Masters in 1981 and from 1985-95 and delivered perhaps his most memorable remark during the 1986 Masters as Nicklaus rallied to win his sixth green jacket and 18th major title. Jim Nantz asked Weiskopf, a four-time runner-up at Augusta National Golf Club, what might be going through the Golden Bear’s mind late in Sunday’s final round. Weiskopf was
frank. “If I knew the way he thought, I’d have won this tournament,” he said.
In later years Weiskopf lamented not getting more out of his immense talent, but he had no regrets about devoting his life to the game.
“Golf, to me, was always such a great challenge of the mind, and there were times I wish I had handled that challenge a little better,” Weiskopf once said. “But I love the game. I love talking about it and thinking about it, and to me it is endlessly fascinating.”
Those who competed against Weiskopf held him in high esteem, never mind what he thought his record should have been.
“When you have a run like Tom had [in 1973], there’s two ways of looking at greatness,” Miller said. “It’s not just always being consistently good, but there’s some point in your career where you might have been the best in the world.”
“Tom Weiskopf had as much talent as any player I’ve ever seen play the TOUR,” Nicklaus said. “He was awfully good for an awfully long time.”
Weiskopf died Aug. 20, 2022, in Big Sky, Montana, at the age of 79 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The timing of his inclusion as a Memorial Tournament Honoree couldn’t be more appropriate. In a measure of their friendship and mutual respect, Weiskopf joined Nicklaus during the official opening of Muirfield Village Golf Club on Memorial Day in 1974. And the day after this year’s Tournament concludes, he will be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Pinehurst, North Carolina. MT
David Shedloski is editorial director of The Memorial. USGA
Weiskopf outdueled Nicklaus to win the 1995 U.S. Senior Open at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland.
MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIP VICTORIES
1973 The Open Championship
PGA TOUR VICTORIES
1968 Andy Williams-San Diego Open Invitational, Buick Open Invitational
1971 Kemper Open, IVB-Philadelphia Golf Classic
1972 Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic
1973 Colonial National Invitation, Kemper Open, IVB-Philadelphia Golf Classic, Canadian Open
1975 Greater Greensboro Open, Canadian Open
1977 Kemper Open
1978 Doral-Eastern Open
1981 LaJet Classic
1982 Western Open
PGA TOUR CHAMPIONS VICTORIES
1994 Franklin Quest Championship
1995 U.S. Senior Open
1996 SBC Dominion Seniors, Pittsburgh Senior Classic
INTERNATIONAL VICTORIES
1972 Picadilly World Match Play Championship
1973 Beck’s PGA Championship
1979 Argentine Open
1981 Benson & Hedges International Open
AMATEUR VICTORIES
1960 Ohio Jaycees Junior
1961 Ohio Public Links Championship
1962 Ohio Public Links Championship
1963 Western Amateur
OTHER VICTORIES
1965 Ohio Open
1973 World Series of Golf
1982 Jerry Ford Invitational
1993 Chrysler Cup
OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS
All-American honors, The Ohio State University 1962
World Golf Hall of Fame 2024
IN 1986 THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT ENDOWMENT was established to allow the Tournament to plan prudently for the future and to continue the development and maintenance of needed facilities. Funds generated from the endowment are used to provide new and better facilities for spectators and fans and to assure the Tournament’s support of several worthwhile charities.
THE MEMBERS OF THE MEMORIAL CLUB ARE:
PAUL B. LOYD JR.
S. TREVOR FERGER
JON ALEXANDER
EVAN J. ANDREWS
HAROLD “ANDY” P. ANDREWS
STEPHEN P. ANDREWS
GREGORY ANTHES
WILLIAM E. ARTHUR
DANIEL J. ASKIN
DAVID W. BABNER
LUKE BABNER
ABNER H. BAGENSTOSE
DONALD “RICK” F. BAIRD
DONALD “RIC” F. BAIRD III
CURT BANGLESDORF
DAVID L. BARNES
KATHY M. BEDELL
WILLIAM BRADLEY BENNETT
ROBERT W. BOICH
TODD E. BORK
BARRY G. BOYLES
GEORGE P. BRAY
JAMES G. BROCKSMITH JR.
FRED C. BROWN
JAMES B. BURKE
MICHAEL A. BYERS
CHAD N. CACCHIO
RONALD E. CALHOUN
THOMAS L. CAMPBELL
PHILIP D. CAMPISI
CRAIG CASSADY
ANTHONY T. CHAPEKIS
JOHN J. CHIMENTO
JOSEPH A. CHLAPATY
GRANT CHRISTMAN
RALPH R. CIOFFI
DAVID CLARK
STEPHEN B. CLARK
THOMAS J. CLARKE
PETER M. CLARKSON
TIMOTHY CLINKSCALES
JOSEPH P. COCHRAN
RICHARD T. COCHRAN
JACK J. CONIE III
RICHARD R. CORNA
JACK E. COUGHLIN
JEG A. COUGHLIN SR.
WILLIAM P. CSEPLO
DOMINIC J. CURCIO
WILLIAM N. DABBELT
ARTHUR J. DeCRANE
CHAD DELLIGATTI
SCOTT E. DeSANO
JON P. DIAMOND
ANTHONY DiGIANDOMENICO
JAMES DIDION
BRIAN W. DILLARD
CHRISTOPHER J. DONABEDIAN
ALVA N. DOPKING JR.
THOMAS B. DYER
DANIEL G. EMMENEGGER JR.
JOHN S. ENSIGN
GREGORY ESSIG
T. WILLIAM EVANS
PHILIP G. FANKHAUSER
SCOTT W. FLEMING
LARRY J. FOX
WILLIAM H. FRANZ
TAKEO FUKUI
R. WILLIAM GARDNER
JOSEPH J. GASPER
JOHN B. GERLACH JR.
CATHY GERRING
KEVIN H. GIDDIS
CHRISTOPHER GODLEY
LEONARD GORSUCH
THOMAS A. GOSNELL
KIM D. GREAVES
LOWELL “ROCKE” GREER
MOISES GUTIERREZ
BRUCE R. HAGUE
JOHN R. HALEY
FRANK D. HARMON
JOHN R. HARPER
MATTHEW R. HARTMAN
THOMAS A. HASSFURTHER
W. HENRY HAUSER
LEO J. HAWK
LAWRENCE J. HAYES
LAWRENCE HEATH
PAUL G. HELLER
JACKSON B. HERCEG
MILAN B. HERCEG
YOSHIHIRO HIDAKA
KOKI HIRASHIMA
CHRIS HITE
RALPH E. HODGES
PHILIP HOFFMAN
THEODORE J. HOST
J. PATRICK HUBER
JOHN B. HUTCHENS
J. LAWRENCE HUTTA
JAMES T. HUTTA
MARTIN INGLIS
THOMAS W. IRELAN
JILL EVANS JOHNSON
C. LEE JOHNSON
THOMAS B. JOHNSON
FRITZ KAISER
JAMES R. KARPAC
KEN ARMEN KAZARIAN
JOHN KELEMEN III
NEIL E. KELLEY
JOHN P. KENNEDY
JOHN W. KESSLER
MATTHEW R. KEYES
BENJAMIN T. KING
SAMUEL B. KING
JAMES M. KOSTELAC
THOMAS C. KRUSE
JOHN KUCHARCZYK
RICHARD S. LANGDALE
DAVID P. LAUER
PETER J. LAVERTY
JEFFREY D. LOGAN
RYAN M. LONG
MICHAEL LONGANO
CHERYL W. LUCKS
JACK E. LUCKS
ROBERT D. MacKINLAY
DANIEL M. MAHER
DONAL H. MALENICK
STEPHEN J. MANGUM
JAMES P. MANOS
ROBERT J. MASSEY
JAMES A. MAXWELL JR.
MICHAEL W. McCARTY
RUSTY McCLURE
JOHN P. McCONNELL
LAWRENCE A. McLERNON
JOHN T. McNICHOLAS
ROBERT S. MEEDER
URBAN MEYER
SCOTT MILLER
VAIL K. MILLER JR.
CAMERON MITCHELL
DAVID J. MLICKI
MICHAEL E. MORRISON
THOMAS E. MOSURE
KYLE J. MUMFORD
GREGORY A. MUNSTER
SIGMUND MUNSTER
MICHAEL R. MURNANE
MASAO NAGAHARA
DENISON “CHIP” NEALE JR.
BARBARA NICKLAUS
JACK W. NICKLAUS
JACK W. NICKLAUS II
JACK W. NICKLAUS III
STEVEN C. NICKLAUS
THOMAS E. NOLAN
DAVID N. NORTH JR.
JAMES A. OBNEY
DANIEL M. O’BRIEN
H.M. “BUTCH” O’NEILL
RICHARD G. ORLANDO
NILES C. OVERLY
PETER PARAS JR.
JOHN W. PARTRIDGE JR.
MICHAEL C. PASCUCCI
ROBERT D. PATRELLA
DAYNA PAYNE
RAY M. PEREZ
CHRISTOPHER B. PESAVENTO
DARYL L. PETERMAN
LOYAL M. PETERMAN
CECIL J. PETITTI II
MARK PHELAN
SCOTT T. PICKETT
BENJAMIN B. PRICE
WILLIAM B. PRICE
GARY L. RACEY
STEPHEN S. RASMUSSEN
C. MICHAEL REARDON
ADAM RICHARDS
DAVID V. RICHARDS
WILLIAM E. ROBERTS
JEFFREY A. ROBY
JOEL ROBY
JOSHUA ROBY
BRADLEY H. ROSELY
ANDREW J. ROTH
MARK J. RUBLE
THOMAS A. RUMFOLA
L. JACK RUSCILLI
LOUIS V. RUSCILLI
ROBERT A. RUSCILLI JR.
MICHAEL D. RYAN
TODD A. SACKETT
MARTIN L. SAVKO JR.
MARTIN L. SAVKO SR.
JOHN F. SCALO JR.
RONALD E. SCHERER
GREGORY E. SCHNEIDER
BRIAN SCHOTTENSTEIN
GARY L. SCHOTTENSTEIN
D. JAMES SCHUMER
JOHN J. SCOTT III
KEVIN SHANAHAN
STEVEN P. SHEPARD
CRAIG R. SHILLING
J. ROBERT SIERRA
CHARLES M. SIMON
SAMUEL E. SMILEY
DOUGLAS A. SMITH
JEFFREY H. SOPP
DAN STERGIOU
ERIC STEWART
JEFFREY L. STEWART
JOHN C. STIEG
JOHN C. STIEG JR.
TYLER W. STIEG
NORMAN C. STRAKER
RICHARD SUCRO
JOSEPH W. TAYLOR
DAVID T. TERRY
RAYMOND J. TESNER
CHARLES C. UNGUREAN
MATTHEW R. VEKASY
BRUCE L. VOR BROKER
WAYNE C. WALKER
RAY C. WASIELEWSKI
ALFRED J. WEISBROD
KENNETH J. WESTERHEIDE
RANDY WILCOX
JEFF WILKINS
EVAN A. WILLIAMS
R. MAX WILLIAMSON
THOMAS J. WILLSON
JAMES L. WILMERS
JOHN O. WINCHESTER
MICHAEL A. WOLCOTT
JIM D. WRIGHT
TROY WRIGHT
DECEASED
TIMOTHY J. BATTAGLIA ’23
JAMES M. BEARD ’12
C. RICHARD BECKETT ’23
MICHAEL J. BERKELEY ’01
L. JOHN BISHOP ’13
MICHAEL D. BLOCH ’16
MICHAEL BOICH ’01
RUSSELL L. BOWERMASTER ’16
KEN BOWDEN ’17
DAN C. BROWER ’15
CHARLES R. CARSON ’12
L. PHILIP CARSTENS ’08
RICHARD F. CHAPDELAINE ’20
CHARLES P. CONRAD ’01
MILLARD M. CUMMINS ’19
FREDERICK DeMATTEIS ’01
JAMES L. EHRET ’24
JOHN R. EVANS ’19
BRETT A. FEBUS ’23
TERRY A. FRIEDMAN ’04
ROBERT P. GARDNER ’20
LOUIS M. HALEY ’06
ZEMPEI HATTORI ’01
JOHN F. HAVENS ’17
JOHN G. HINES ’14
ROBERT S. HOAG ’13
KENNETH HOULE ’98
VICTOR D. IRELAN ’23
PETER J. JOCHUMS ’21
JEFF KEELER JR. ’05
JACK E. KING ’17
ROBERT A. LANDTHORN ’21
RICHARD A. LANG ’02
LARRY L. LIEBERT ’23
PAUL B. LONG JR. ’23
CHRISTIAN D. MAHER ’24
GEORGE W. McCLOY ’24
JOHN H. McCONNELL ’08
DAN R. McFARLAND ’22
JOHN W. McKITRICK ’19
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Fireball is the preferred Cinnamon Whisky of
June 3-9, 2024
Doug Ferguson has been a prolific golf beat writer for the Associated Press, though readers might not always know his work
BY JOHN STREGEIT’S ODDLY AMUSING at times that the most widely read golf writer in the world is often unknown to those reading him, even by his own father. Bylines from Associated Press stories frequently are omitted in publications around the world, and Doug Ferguson, the heralded fulltime golf writer for the AP since 1998, recalls how he received a phone message from his father Brad one day in 2018.
“I just read a short story that Phil Rodgers died of leukemia,” his dad had said.
“He knew what I did,” Ferguson said, “but he never realized all the stories he was reading were mine. It was priceless.”
Yet for the 25-plus years Ferguson has been writing them, everyone inside the golf world has known who was authoring them as he evolved into one of the most prolific golf writers in the long history of the sport. In 2019, he was awarded the PGA of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism.
Doug Ferguson, one of the most widely read golf writers, chats with a player who is one of the most widely covered: Tiger Woods
PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS
Bernard Darwin
Herb Graffis
O.B. Keeler
Henry Longhurst
Grantland Rice
Herbert Warren Wind
Ferguson interviews two-time Memorial Tournament winner Patrick Cantlay.
The latest recognition of his talent, tireless work ethic and contribution to golf journalism is his selection as the 2024 recipient of the Memorial Golf Journalism Award.
In a manner, it closes a circle for Ferguson, for whom golf’s hold on him was solidified in 1975 by Jack Nicklaus, the Founder and Host of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. It began with Ferguson watching Nicklaus win the Masters in April and the PGA Championship at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, in August. “The ’75 Masters was probably my first real remembrance of television [golf],” he said. “When everyone votes for the ’86 or ’97 Masters, I still vote for the ’75 Masters and still think it was the coolest Masters I ever saw.
“Jack was kind of my guy. That’s what got me into golf. So the Memorial award takes on a special meaning for me.”
Peter Dobereiner
Bob Green
Furman Bisher
Michael Williams
Bob Drum
Ronald Heager
Peter Ryde
Lincoln A. Werden
Renton Laidlaw Nick Seitz
Michael
Robert Sommers
John Garrity
Jerry Tarde
Larry Dorman
Ron Balicki
Peter Alliss
Jim Nantz
Tim Rosaforte
John Huggan
Ferguson, 62, was introduced to golf at an early age. His grandfather was a charter member of La Jolla Country Club in San Diego, a club whose history includes Gene Littler, Mickey Wright and the aforementioned Rodgers. “My dad grew up in La Jolla and played on the high school team with Phil Rodgers,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson skipped the first grade and was only 20 when he graduated from Abilene Christian University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish. “I had no idea what to do,” he said.
He was told he could get into teaching. Instead, when his father was transferred to Norman, Oklahoma, Ferguson chose to enroll at Oklahoma University. Six months later, he walked into the office of the university newspaper, the Oklahoma Daily, and volunteered. His first assignment was a Nebraska-OU women’s volleyball game, “and it just went from there,” he said.
Ferguson later received an internship with the Associated Press office in Oklahoma City. Eventually, he was given a full-time position covering news for its Tulsa bureau. Among the stories with which he was involved included a drug trial in Tulsa of the number three man in the Medellin Cartel, “a trial right out of Miami Vice,” he said. He also covered two executions and the bombing of the Oklahoma City Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995.
Golf writing, meanwhile, had begun for him the summer before, when the PGA Championship was held at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa (won by Nick Price). Owen Canfield, the AP’s Oklahoma sports editor, recommended to Ron Sirak, the AP’s deputy sports editor in New York
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and eventually its golf writer, that Ferguson be included in the coverage. “Ron and I really hit it off,” Ferguson said.
The following year, the TOUR Championship was played at Southern Hills, giving Ferguson yet more high-profile golf coverage experience. He was then reassigned to Jacksonville, Florida, as the AP’s sportswriter there. In 1998, when Sirak left the AP to join Golf Digest’s weekly magazine, Golf World, Ferguson became the AP’s full-time golf writer.
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“It’s been a lot of fun and great to be around,” he said. “It’s the best sport to cover. There’s so much personality, so much nuance about it. If you didn’t really like golf, there’s no way you could do it.”
The game already had its hold on Ferguson, a good golfer, but eventually a substantially better golf writer, acknowledged in 2009 when he was one of two recipients of the Associated Press’ highest honor, the $10,000 Gramling Journalism Award. The other honoree was photographer Emilio Morenatti, who had his left foot amputated after a bombing in Afghanistan.
Though Ferguson is acutely aware that a golf course is not a battlefield, and that he gave up no body parts in the process, the award nonetheless is a testament to a journalist who has mastered his craft, despite occasionally doing so in anonymity—even, at times, among his family. MT
John Strege is a veteran of more than 25 years with Golf Digest and is the author of seven books, including “When War Played Through: Golf During World War II,” winner of the USGA’s Herbert Warren Wind Book Award in 2005.
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VIKTOR HOVLAND FOUND PLENTY TO BE HAPPY ABOUT IN 2023, STARTING WITH HIS PLAYOFF VICTORY IN THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT
BY JIM M c CABETAKE IT FROM PEOPLE who have been around Viktor Hovland: At first glance, your view of this young man will feel similar to what your second or third glances will afford you. Smiling. In great spirits. Cheerful sort of lad. Lykkelig comes to mind. The Norwegian word that means “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.”
Now, before you opt to credit this lykkelig on the $3.6 million Hovland received for winning the 2023 Memorial Tournament presented by Workday or the eye-opening $18 million he collected for winning the TOUR Championship and FedExCup 2½ months later, we suggest you brush up on your reading. Specifically, “The World Happiness Report,” which is published by a collaboration of several parties, most notably the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
“[The Memorial] was historic, because it was my first [pro win] in the United States. I know if I can win [at Muirfield Village], I can win anywhere.”
OK, it’s not exactly James Patterson or Margaret Atwood best-selling stuff, but annually “The World Happiness Report” has identified Norway as the seventh happiest country in the world. So if you wonder if the 26-year-old is cut out of pure Norwegian cloth, what you get is (surprise, surprise) a smile and a nod of the head.
“I would say I am. I guess it’s a lot of genes,” said Hovland, who assures anyone who’ll ask that his father, Harland, and mother, Galina, are very happy people, as are his cousins and friends.
“Norway,” he gushed, “is a pretty happy country. It’s a lot about that.”
That perpetual state of happiness makes Hovland an easy player to caddie for, said Shay Knight, an Aussie who has been on the bag since the former U.S. Amateur champion turned pro in June of 2019. “He’s a very calm guy,” Knight said. “He can get angry, but lets it go quickly.”
—VIKTOR HOVLAND
Which is as good a time as any to return to a day when Hovland indeed percolated inside, but let it go quickly. It was the final round of last year’s Memorial, and if you want to circle June 4, 2023, as the day when Viktor Hovland took his game to the next level, you’d get very few arguments for that one.
“It was huge, being that it was really my first big win,” said Hovland, whose pro career had gathered a lot of early steam, only his three PGA TOUR wins had been of the under-the-radar variety—the Puerto Rico Open in 2020 then back-to-back at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba in the ’21 and ’22 seasons.
his full potential in those wins. But the Memorial? “That,” he said, “was historic, because it was my first [pro win] in the United States. I know if I can win [at Muirfield Village], I can win anywhere.”
“The Resort King,” he was proclaimed and, yes, Hovland smiles widely when that is mentioned. Honesty, after all, is a staple for this Norwegian, and he knows he hadn’t really shown
To prove that point, Hovland went on an emphatic stretch after leaving Muirfield Village Golf Club. He ran off a series of decent, if not spectacular, finishes, including 19th at the U.S. Open and T-13 at The Open Championship. But in early August, Hovland came from behind to win the BMW Championship, a FedExCup playoff tournament, thanks to a stunning final-round 61 at Olympia Fields. The next week he shot 68-64-66-63 to run away with the mega-rich TOUR Championship, which assured him the FedExCup title.
Just like that, all the promise that had been thrust upon Hovland after his standout career at Oklahoma State (an NCAA team title followed by the U.S. Amateur championship at Pebble Beach in 2018 being the highlights) came to fruition.
ABOVE: Viktor Hovland checks out the Havemayer Trophy for winning the 2018 U.S. Amateur. INSET: Hovland was low amateur in the 2019 Masters.
“Winning the Memorial made it [the FedExCup] all possible.”
—VIKTOR HOVLAND
Hovland wasn’t “The Resort King,” he was the “Real Thing,” and while the FedExCup trophy shined in his hands in Atlanta at East Lake Golf Club, the truth is, it was set in motion at Muirfield Village two months earlier.
“Winning the Memorial made it all possible,” Hovland said, noting that he is most proud of the fact that he won at Jack’s Place in large part because of a short game that had been holding him back. “Let’s face it, I didn’t have the short game to win out here.”
His ability to be honest with himself didn’t need more testimony, but statistics proved Hovland’s weakness. In 2022, Hovland was ranked 99th in Scrambling and 191st in Strokes Gained: Around the Green. So he went to work with swing coach Joey Mayo with all the focus on the short game. It made sense, because no one was as fearless with the driver and hit the
big club as well as Hovland. He took one side of the golf course out of play and was a fairways and greens machine.
Almost immediately, Hovland saw dividends, as he put up top-10 finishes at four marquee tournaments—the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the PLAYERS and the year’s first two major championships, the Masters and PGA Championship. He finished tied for seventh in the first and was in the mix in the closing stretch of the PGA at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York, before finishing runner-up behind Brooks Koepka.
But it was his playoff victory over Denny McCarthy at the Memorial Tournament where it all came together, where he emerged from a crowded leaderboard in which 19 players were within three strokes of the lead of 6 under par after 54 holes. Hovland, who began the final round at 5-under 211, carded
BY 11, HOVLAND WAS HOOKED, AND BY 14 HE WAS THE NORWEGIAN AMATEUR CHAMPION. OSLO, WE HAVE LIFTOFF.
a 3-under 69, highlighted by the only birdie at the par-4 17th hole and a nifty up-and-down par save at the home hole to post 8-under 280. When McCarthy, leader for most of the day, made his only bogey of the round at 18, a playoff ensued, and Hovland won it with a two-putt par from 58 feet as McCarthy made another bogey.
When Alan Bratton, the Oklahoma State University men’s golf coach went to scout Norway’s Kris Ventura at the 2013 European Boys Team Championship, he noticed another Norwegian, Viktor Hovland, who was two years younger. Not only did Bratton land Ventura, but after return visits to that championship in 2014 and 2015, he successfully recruited Hovland, too.
THE ROAD FROM OSLO to Dublin, Ohio, started in, of all places, St. Louis, Missouri. That’s where Harald Hovland, an engineer, was on a business trip. To give himself a break, he started hitting golf balls and enjoyed it. What the heck, he said to himself, might as well bring home a set for 8-year-old Viktor. By 11, Hovland was hooked, and by 14 he was the Norwegian Amateur champion. Oslo, we have liftoff.
Everything that Bratton had pitched was delivered to Hovland during his three years in Stillwater, Oklahoma. That he still calls that small college town home when he’s in the U.S. speaks volumes for the humble Norwegian, but Hovland is quick to concede that his path played out as he had envisioned it.
“You see all those players [like] Rickie Fowler, pretty much everyone out there on TOUR—they went to college,” Hovland told The Oklahoman newspaper. “That kind of
opened doors. That’s kind of how I thought; go there, get better, and if I do well in college, that means I’m getting ready for the PGA TOUR.”
✶✶✶✶✶
HOVLAND WAS PREPARING for the 2020 Memorial Tournament, played in that chaotic pandemic year in mid-July, when a golf cart approached. The driver, Tournament Founder and Host Jack Nicklaus, needed no introduction. Hovland was a little bit awe-struck. “It was very, very cool,” said Hovland. “Mr. Nicklaus just rolled up and asked me a few questions. He said he liked the way I played and to keep doing well.”
It didn’t go so well in that debut (Hovland ended up T-48), and he played similarly in ’21 (T-47) and ’22 (T-51). But the Hovland who returned for his fourth trip in 2023 was different in one massive way—he had a short game. “That up-and-down
[on his 72nd hole] was the one I was most nervous about,” said Hovland. “It was a five-footer, hard right-to-left break, and when it fell, I felt so proud of that hole.”
What followed soon thereafter, the walk off the 18th hole in the playoff, “is one of the most awesome traditions in golf,” said Hovland. He greeted Nicklaus as thunderous ovations rang out.
“What a thrill,” said Hovland, whose happy Norwegian roots were in overdrive. “I have great respect [for him], and I wanted to thank him for what he’s done for us.”
Here’s a guess: Years from now, Viktor Hovland will give thanks to the 2023 Memorial Tournament for what it did for his career. MT
Jim McCabe was a longtime golf writer with The Boston Globe, Golfweek Magazine, and pgatour.com. He now publishes a weekly digital golf newsletter called Power Fades.
THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT has long been considered a rite of passage to prominence for the world’s best golfers. The track record is there: Over the 48-year history of the Memorial Tournament, nine winners have gone on to secure their first major championship. Over those 48 years, 29 Memorials were won by past or future major champions, and those winners have combined for 73 major championship titles.
None of that was lost on Viktor Hovland.
When Hovland outlasted Denny McCarthy in a playoff to win the 2023 Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, it was as if Founder and Host Jack Nicklaus not only offered his coveted handshake and some crystal on the 18th green, but also validation. “The Memorial was arguably Viktor’s first big win,” Nicklaus said recently. “He used that as a steppingstone to continue to play well. He has since become one of the elite players in today’s game.”
The Memorial was Hovland’s fourth PGA TOUR victory
but his first on U.S. soil; the Norwegian’s previous wins were two victories at the World Wide Technology Championship in Mexico and one in Puerto Rico. His Memorial Tournament triumph served as a springboard to his finest season. He rose to No. 5 in the world and went on to take playoff victories at the BMW Championship and the TOUR Championship en route to capturing his first FedExCup title.
At Muirfield Village Golf Club, Hovland showcased a short game that had often been missing from his arsenal. In the closing three holes of Sunday’s final round, Hovland took it on with a grin-and-Bear-it attitude. He birdied two of the three on Saturday to get in the mix, and he played them in 1 under on Sunday to get into a playoff.
His 2-under 70 on a layout baked by relentless sun undeniably was impressive considering that the field scoring average on Sunday was just under 75. Hovland forced the playoff thanks to a 30-foot birdie on the 17th—the only final-round birdie on that
difficult hole—and a par save from behind the 18th green.
When McCarthy and Hovland went to the 18th in the playoff, Hovland barely reached the front of the green, some 60 feet away from the back pin. But he managed to get down in two putts, including a 7-footer for par. “At one time I didn’t have all the tools,” Hovland said. “Since then, I have improved all the time and gotten better and better each year. With that comes the belief. The belief was the last missing piece.”
A devastated McCarthy, one of the elite putters on the PGA TOUR, made several crucial par saves Sunday to also shoot 70, but his round was marred by a bogey at 18 that dropped him into the playoff. In fact, he bogeyed 18 twice.
In regulation, McCarthy missed the fairway to the left, pitched out to the fairway, and narrowly missed a 25-foot par putt for the win. In the playoff, his shot from the right rough rolled back off the green 50 yards away. He pitched to 12 feet and the putt caught the left edge and spun away.
“I’m heartbroken,” said McCarthy, after coming so close to his first win in 156 PGA TOUR starts.
The 48th playing of the Memorial Tournament began with a leaderboard topped by an unlikely candidate. Alabama graduate Davis Riley rode four birdies on the front nine to finish the first round at 5-under 67. One shot back was Matt Wallace.
Hideki Matsuyama, the 2014 Memorial winner, opened the second-round scoring with a morning 7-under 65. But he finished the day one behind Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year Justin Suh, who backed up his opening 70 with a 66 to lead at 8-under 136. Two-time Memorial winner Patrick Cantlay was two behind, while those at 140 included 2020 Memorial winner Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy, who rebounded from a triple-bogey on the 18th hole Thursday with a 68 on Friday.
McIlory kept his momentum going on Saturday with a 70 to get to 6-under 210, sharing the top spot with David Lipsky (72) and Si Woo Kim (71). The stirring narrative, though, was that 38 others finished the third round within five of their lead.
Sitting a shot back of the leaders were six players, highlighted by the presence of McCarthy (68) and Hovland (69) and setting the stage for Sunday’s dramatic final round.
The last man standing, Hovland was the only player to break par in all four rounds, yet his lowest round was a 69.
“I played smart. I played my game. And I came up clutch this time,” Hovland said. MT
Scott Tolley is contributing editor of The Memorial.
Fifty years ago, JACK NICKLAUS opened MUIRFIELD VILLAGE GOLF CLUB and fulfilled his dream of building the ultimate tournament course in his hometown
BY DAVID SHEDLOSKI
JACK NICKLAUS officially opened Muirfield Village Golf Club on a bright blue-sky Memorial Day 50 years ago— the official date was May 27, 1974—he unveiled something more than just a golf course. He introduced his vision for presenting the game with breathtaking originality, creative intelligence and an adherence to excellence commensurate with his competitive career.
“To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a golf course like Muirfield built in the United States,” the Golden Bear said proudly that day, citing the quality of the layout that would test both members and tournament golfers and be noted for its accommodations for spectators. “Perhaps our greatest innovation is the course’s viewability. No course has ever been built specifically for tournament golf before, although there will be others after this. It’s been really exciting for me to start with an idea and emerge eight years later with it totally intact.”
Six years after Nicklaus and fellow Ohio State product Tom Weiskopf ceremoniously cut the ribbon and four years after Muirfield Village hosted the inaugural Memorial Tournament, the PGA TOUR opened the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, validating Nicklaus’ prediction that his “amphitheater” concept indeed was worthy of replication.
The golf course that Nicklaus introduced a half-century ago wasn’t quite the masterpiece it is today—though it certainly was a masterpiece all the same. Through the intervening decades, Nicklaus has instituted a number of refinements and revisions, including a significant overhaul in 2020. Not only has he strived continually to make incremental improvements, but he also has succeeded in maintaining its relevance as a proper test of golf for elite players. Piece by piece, he has made it better.
The first iteration of the par-72 layout was a modest 6,983 yards (though the official yardage for the first Memorial Tournament was 6,969 yards) and fortified by 77 bunkers and natural and man-made water hazards. Today it measures a significantly fortified 7,571 yards—and water, which comes into play on 15 holes, is a more conspicuous element. Not only has Muirfield Village been a successful showcase for the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday for 49 years, but it is the only course in the world to host the Ryder Cup, the Presidents
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Cup and the Solheim Cup. The 1992 U.S. Amateur is among other notable events the club has welcomed over the years.
All of this from an idea, a vision by one man with the steadfast determination to see it through. Fifty years ago, when Nicklaus played that first “official” round with Weiskopf— one of this year’s Tournament Honorees—few people knew of the monumental challenges involved in bringing that idea to fruition. Fewer still had a sense for its potential. The people of Columbus just saw a very nice golf course built by their famously successful native son. Jack, of course, saw so much more.
TO ACCURATELY COVER the ground before Nicklaus broke ground on construction in 1972, let’s rewind the tape to find the very seed kernel that eventually blossomed into Muirfield Village Golf Club.
Having drawn inspiration from the Masters Tournament, Nicklaus had been a professional golfer barely more than a
“Precision will be the name of the game at Muirfield— and courage and cool-headedness.” —JACK NICKLAUS
year before he began pondering whether his hometown could adequately accommodate and support an annual TOUR event. Then the 1964 PGA Championship was held at Columbus Country Club. The reception central Ohio fans lavished on the championship—in which upstart Bobby Nichols won wire to wire and relegated Nicklaus (the defending champion) and reigning Masters champion Arnold Palmer to second place— provided confirmation that Nicklaus might be onto something.
The practice rounds drew record crowds exceeding 5,000 people—a massive number in that era. Attendance was off the charts for the four championship rounds, including a record 17,500 for the final round. Praise was universal for the organizing committee, with Nicklaus saying, “this is the best-run tournament I’ve ever seen, except the Masters.”
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Soon after, the young Golden Bear began to discuss the idea of hosting an annual golf tournament with his father Charlie and friends Ivor Young and Pandel Savic, and he also ran it by veteran sportswriter Paul Hornung of the Columbus Dispatch. Except for Ohio State University football, there weren’t any
major sporting events in Columbus, and there hadn’t been a regular pro event since the Columbus Invitational was held from 1946-48. By 1966, Nicklaus had given Young his marching orders during a discussion at the Masters to find a suitable piece of ground. With Pete Dye, a budding star in the architecture world, in tow, Nicklaus didn’t need much time before deciding on a tract of farmland that he recognized as hunting ground he once traipsed with his father.
Soon after, he made his first purchase along what was Ashbaugh Road in Delaware County, and eventually he came to own roughly 1,600 acres that straddled Delaware and Franklin Counties. Dye assisted with an initial routing—little of which was ultimately incorporated—and Desmond Muirhead provided guidance on a land plan for the course and surrounding development. But the conceptualization and strategic characteristics of the layout were purely Jack’s handiwork. He made sure of that with hands-on dedication from the moment he broke ground two years to the day of the grand opening.
“Precision,” Nicklaus was quoted as saying in an early club promotional brochure, “will be the name of the game at Muirfield—and courage and cool-headedness.” No surprise there; that was his game.
THERE EXISTED AN UNDERCURRENT of spiritual intensity to opening day at Muirfield Village. Also an unexpected level of interest. Club members, local public servants and business dignitaries and Nicklaus family and friends were supposed to be the only audience, but friends of friends and various other golf fans and curiosity seekers found their way onto the grounds, swelling attendance to around 1,200. Among the onlookers was one of the most important figures in Nicklaus’ life, his longtime instructor Jack Grout, whom Jack brought back to Columbus as pro emeritus.
“It was actually a pretty crazy scene, with people everywhere,” said Jim Gerring, who served as the club’s first head pro until 1997. “You had Jack, of course, and Weiskopf was one of the top players at the time, two Ohio State guys. There were no gallery ropes. I announced the scores after each hole, but I don’t know if many people were paying attention. There was a lot of excitement.”
A prayer invocation by the Rev. William Smith preceded the ribbon cutting by Nicklaus, Weiskopf and Nicklaus’ business partner, Putnam Pierman. “There was a moment during the prayer when Jack’s father Charlie was mentioned, and Jack lifted his head a bit and looked up to the sky,” recalled author and former Golf Digest writer Tom Callahan, who at the time was covering the proceedings for the Cincinnati Enquirer. “You had a sense that Jack was giving something back to Columbus, but he also was fulfilling a promise to his dad.”
Jack granted Pierman the honor of a ceremonial tee shot. A Columbus native, Pierman wasn’t a golfer, but he was instrumental in arranging the financing that pushed the project to the finish line. Clad in a beige suit, Pierman slapped a drive that might still be buried somewhere underneath one of the villas. “It went dead right over people’s heads. We never found it. I was just glad the first tee shot didn’t kill someone,” Nicklaus said, chuckling. Jack, of course, split the fairway with his first drive. That set the tone for quite an exhibition. “He was so good that day, it was beyond impressive,” Gerring said.
THE GOLDEN BEAR has left his tracks all over the Dublin area with the creation of Muirfield Village Golf Club, but before Jack Nicklaus completed his dream course and put his hometown permanently on the golf map with the inception of the Memorial Tournament, another legendary figure roamed the property.
Or so goes the story. It’s one of the stranger chapters in the birth of the club.
In September 1973, as the construction of the course neared completion, security guards at Muirfield Village and a few area farmers reported seeing “an eightfoot hairy monster” roaming the property. A Columbus Dispatch, story dated Monday, Oct. 1, 1973, detailed the sightings of what witnesses believed was Ohio’s breed of “Bigfoot.”
According to the story, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department took the reports seriously enough to open an investigation. Two guards from the Able Detective and Security Systems saw the creature, as did nearby Dublin farmers. The frightened guards began to carry rifles, and the security firm doubled the number of guards on the night shift. One farmer told Sheriff’s Investigator Theodore Galligan that he stopped going out after dark because the mysterious figure had scared his cows.
Jack and Barbara Nicklaus remember receiving a report on the sightings, but Barbara pointed out that no one actually found the mythic Sasquatch, which must have gotten lost; allegedly it resides exclusively in the Northwest region of the U.S.
The timing of the Dispatch story is not surprising. According to a story in the Yale Review, “The 1970s were the prime time for Sasquatch, as well-funded investigators took up the hunt on the heels of the Patterson-Gimlin film.” That would be the famous footage shot by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in 1967 near Bluff Creek, California, that eventually was discredited as a hoax. What’s peculiar is that October 1 happens to be the date that Nicklaus played the first unofficial round at Muirfield Village with friends Bob Hoag, Pandel Savic and Ivor Young as well as the club’s new head pro Jim Gerring.
Nicklaus could only laugh at the memory of the reports. “He must not have liked golf very much because once we finished the course, I think the sightings mysteriously stopped.” —DS
With an eagle and four birdies, including a 30-footer on the home hole, the Golden Bear posted a 6-under 66 that stood as the course record for nearly a decade. All these years later, Nicklaus shrugged off the performance. “Sixty-six was more of an occurrence back then than it is now,” Nicklaus kidded. “No, I wasn’t nervous. What did I have to be nervous about? I was excited to finally have the golf course done. I can tell you that I was pretty nervous before the first Memorial Tournament.”
Despite spending time at Muirfield Village even before it officially opened, Weiskopf, the reigning British Open champion, countered with a 73—though he would break Jack’s mark with a 65 in the final round of the 1983 Memorial.
“They were big rivals, Jack and Tom, but I got the sense that Tom wanted to play well but not show up Jack that day,” Callahan said. “But it wasn’t going to matter. Jack was sensational. He was serious. And I know he was proud of having that record. I asked him before the first Memorial if he thought Sam Snead, who was still very good, could shoot his age. Sam was 64. Jack said, ‘Let him shoot his age in a few years.’ ”
Upon opening Muirfield Village, Nicklaus received several congratulatory telegrams. One of them read, “Amigo, hope you built water hazards 270 yards out, too long for me, just right for you.” Of course, Lee Trevino was the author.
Muirfield Village Golf Club was officially open for business, with a PGA TOUR event all but a certainty in its future. More than once in its early days Jack’s place was referred to as “the Masters of the North,” thencommissioner Joe Dey among those making the comparison. It was a wonderful compliment, but Nicklaus’ goals were more personal and parochial.
“This happened because I believe very deeply in this course and was determined to make it happen,” he said that spring afternoon. “It had to be in Columbus because I wanted to try to give something back to the city of my birth.
“I’ve always wanted to put together a course MY way,” he added. “To find a sensational piece of natural countryside and make a great course. … The course is a reflection of what has happened in my life, of what golf means to me. I guess you’d have to say it’s my mark, at least closer to one than anything I’ve ever done.” And so it is. Which is saying something. MT
David Shedloski is editorial director of The Memorial.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Immediately following the 2020 Memorial Tournament, Jack Nicklaus, the Tournament Founder and Host as well as the designer of Muirfield Village Golf Club, initiated a comprehensive renovation of his prized and highly regarded golf course. Perennially ranked among the top layouts in the U.S. since opening in 1974, Muirfield Village primarily was designed to host a PGA TOUR event. This was a dream that was born from a conversation at the 1966 Masters and fulfilled a decade later with the first playing of the Memorial Tournament. Nicklaus always has been mindful to keep Muirfield Village Golf Club playable for the club’s membership while presenting a sturdy test for the game’s top players. His latest work on the course addressed multiple goals: improve the functionality of the layout; strengthen the challenge for the game’s top professionals; and offer amateur players an increasingly enjoyable golf experience. In the following pages, the Golden Bear takes us on a tour of the course, offering his insights on key changes, including a modest stretching of the Tournament tees to 7,569 yards, while also describing his approach to playing each hole.
4.2044.127 8TH 6TH
WITH AN ADDED 20 YARDS, the opening hole has length to it, but it is a fairly simple hole that plays downhill and, most of the time, downwind. The tee was slid left a few yards to give you a little better angle. The bunkers along the right fairway were reduced but pushed out farther. So, rather than challenge them, the play off the tee should be short or left of those bunkers—as it was originally designed. The green, which was pushed into the hill that once backed the previous green, has been expanded on the right side to counter the added length. It’s a softer green that plays around a big bunker on the left, and there is an option to run the ball in from the right side.
4
4.1394.155 6TH 8TH
DESPITE ADDING 8-10 YARDS, this is basically the same hole with very few changes. The field will hit 3-wood or driver off the tee, and then play a mid- to short iron into the green. The green has not been changed, with the exception of the left side, where we took a little off cosmetically to give you a better view into the left bunker. Accuracy is a premium, because you still have to be careful of the creek on the right.
4.0464.059 14TH 13TH
WE MOVED THE TEES DOWN THE HILL to the right about 20 yards to give you more of a look up the creek bed that runs up the left side and right up to the green. Also, from the prior tee, you found yourself looking right into the houses on the right. The play off the tee is a long iron or 3-wood into position, although some players will play driver. The green has been enlarged a little, with the bunker on the right removed. The entire green now feeds into the water, although it is a little flatter and softer, especially in the middle, with more pin placements than before. On the approach shot, the right side of the green is now covered with water, so the left side of the green is obviously the preferred play.
3.1303.157 5TH 9TH
THE FIRST PAR 3 OFFERS THE SAME TEE SHOT AS BEFORE, with the only difference being that the green has been widened about three paces. The back bunker has been removed and the green now stretches farther back, so the tee shot plays significantly longer. This green went from one of the smallest on the golf course to arguably the largest. The pin variance will leave golfers playing a middle iron to a long iron into the back of the green. There are a couple of deep bunkers on the left, and those sort of protect the ball from getting away from the hole and into the steep drop-off. The bunkers on the right still offer a great challenge.
4.9054.740 17TH 15TH
THE FIFTH HOLE IS ACTUALLY SHORTER THAN BEFORE. After moving the tee down and to the left, we knocked down the hill on the right for better visibility off the tee. The creek still splits the hole, forcing a decision off the tee. I would say that 95 percent of the players— maybe even more—will hit the ball down the fairway on the left side, probably with a 3-wood. There will be the occasional player who will try to take it over the water, leaving himself with a short iron into the green. Have at it! It is there for the taking, if you want it, but the penalty is severe. The green, which has been moved back 30 yards and to the left, is a bit smaller and narrower and is protected by a bunker front left and two little ones on the right. The more aggressive you get, the tougher the third shot. If you lay it back for a wedge third shot, you are looking right up the green. If you try to get a little more aggressive and get up closer to the green, it could be good, but if you go long, the pitch is over a bunker to a green running towards the water.
4.0004.088 12TH 14TH
SHOTLINK DATA INDICATED THAT TOO MANY BALLS OFF THE TEE were being hit over the left fairway bunker, so 10-12 yards were added, and that bunker is now more relevant to today’s players. Depending on the wind, this might be the first hole where most of the players in the field go with driver. Remember, the course mostly plays downhill, so 7,500 yards translates to something closer to 7,200 or 7,300 yards. The optimal tee shot is right of the first bunker on the left, and short of the second bunker on the right, leaving a short iron over the water to a green that is a little bit softer, allowing for more pin placements in the back portion.
4.7554.764 16TH 17TH
THE TEE SHOT IS THE SAME, though we added 5-6 yards, and demands a drive in between the four fairway bunkers. The green has been moved back and left and has a little bit more undulation in it. The same opening exists in the front, but you have an up-and-over putt to the left side of the green. Some fairway has been added to the back side of the green, so if a ball is hit too far, rather than stop in the rough just behind the green it will instead roll down a slope into a fairway pad. I think it is bit more fun to play, though perhaps a little more difficult.
3.1173.083 13TH 10TH
THE TEE SHOT SHOULD BE A 6- OR 7-IRON for most of the players, maybe an 8-iron at times, depending on where the pin is located on the green. The problem before the latest renovation was that the old green was built on top of an older green. So we eliminated both versions and created a new green. At the same time, we rebuilt the bunker on the right. The build-up on the right side of that bunker made for an impossible shot at times. Now, the grade has dropped a little and makes for a much more playable bunker shot.
4.1094.110 9TH 11TH
MOST PLAYERS IN THE FIELD WILL HIT A DRIVER OR 3-WOOD, depending on how aggressive a fellow wants to be off the tee. But it’s the approach where things have changed and get more interesting. We basically eliminated the back-left of the green, and at the same time we lengthened the green along the right playing down to the water. We changed the back-right bunker—almost cutting it in half—so we could add some space to provide another pin placement farther right. With the left of the green reduced, we don’t have as many pin locations as we used to, but we have a few nice cupping options on the front of the green, near the water. The same elements come into play—you have the water front and right of the green, and an awkward chip from the back running toward the water.
4.1494.163 3RD 7TH (TIE)
IF YOU LOOK AT CLUB SELECTION OFF THE TEE at Muirfield Village Golf Club, you might play driver twice on the front (Nos. 6 and 7), and likely five or six times on the back—beginning here. This hole presents the same tee shot, although we did narrow the fairway a bit. You want to hit the ball to the right of the left fairway bunker. The green has been moved to the left, providing a bit more space on the right. We have fairway that runs around to the back right of the green, with a bunker situated in the middle to complement two bunkers on the left of the green. We now have five pin positions the PGA TOUR can choose from: front, middle-right, middle-left, middle-right-back-left, and middle-back-center. This has created a little more variety than we had before, and in the end, I think it is a much better hole.
4.8074.896 15TH 16TH
PLAYERS FACE THE SAME TEE SHOT, with the creek on the left and bunker on the right. If you fit a driver between the two and hit it long, you can get home in two. If you want to play it as a three-shot par 5, the players might go hybrid, iron and wedge into the green. The green was moved to the left to avoid the trees on the right. Before the renovation, the trees would hang out there, and players would sometimes have to slice a shot into the green, which isn’t the play that should be required. The green is more of a bowl, meaning if you miss it long or to the right, the chip is a little more severe coming down the hill into the green. Hit the green in two, and there is an opportunity for eagle here.
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3.2203.149 7TH 5TH
DEPENDING
4.2284.103 10TH 4TH
WE NARROWED THE FAIRWAY just beyond the bunker on the left, from about 42 yards to about 22 yards. We then added trees on the left side. So now, if you want to try to drive it forever down the left side, we have provided you a little bit more of a challenge for your second shot. Two bunkers guard the large green right, left and in the rear.
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4.0794.098 11TH 12TH
I BELIEVE THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST short par 4s in the game of golf. Because of that, we made no changes whatsoever in the design. It is still a drivable par 4, if the player so chooses, but that is a risky option. Most competitors are likely to play a long iron off the tee, and a 9-iron or wedge into the green. The penalties are obvious, with the potential of missing into the water up the right or putting the ball into the bunkers on the left, which means you’re left with a very difficult up and down with the green running toward the water. It’s truly a fun hole to play.
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4.5414.692 18TH 18TH
WE MADE MAJOR CHANGES during the renovation, and, thus, changes the way the hole is played. We took the fairway, dropped it about 20 feet, and moved it left to bring the creek bed on the left side into play. We added four bunkers on the right to take up the elevation change and provide transition from the trees on the right down to the fairway. Although the second shot from the fairway is pretty much the same, you can see where your shot could land if you lay up and then how you can play into the green. The green has been dropped a bit and moved to the right. The water hazard at the front of the green has been expanded on the right side, with two little bunkers between the water and the green. But if your ball misses the green to the right, it should find the water hazard. It is a tough chip from the left or behind the green. We will see a lot of eagle and birdie chances here, but
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3.3643.164 2ND 2ND
AFTER WE REDESIGNED THE HOLE prior to the 2013 Presidents Cup, it just didn’t play like I wanted or what the Memorial field liked. The green wouldn’t hold shots, especially on the back left. It turned out that the left side pitched away from the tee, and that should not have been the case. So, we took eight inches from the middle of the green and added eight inches to the left so that it holds shots better. Since then, I’ve refined it further, installing a new back tee in 2022 and then shifting that tee and the forward tees to the right following the 2023 Memorial so it plays more down the length of the green. Players will have better access to the front third of the green, but if they want to get at a back pin, then they’ve still got a challenge to do that. I also replaced the right-front bunker with a little slope that comes off the green.
4.3294.163 3RD 3RD (TIE)
BECAUSE OF THE DISTANCE PLAYERS ARE DRIVING THE BALL, I made further changes here by adding about 18 yards to the tee shot. In 2020, we took the bunker on the left in about 20 yards and the one on the end of the fairway on the right in about 4 or 5 yards. Players now face a daunting tee shot that requires a great deal of precision. If you get into one of those bunkers, you’ve got some work left. A small creek runs in front of the green, which we softened a bit to create more pin placements. Three bunkers protect the left and right side of the putting surface.
4.3994.247 1ST 1ST
THE 18TH HOLE, A STRONG DOGLEG RIGHT, has the same tee shot as before, with most of the players going with 3-wood and leaving themselves a middle to short iron into the green, but they have to avoid the creek on the left and bunkers at the corner of the dogleg on the right. Before the renovation, we had only one pin position on the back left of the green, so we softened that area. We also softened the back right of the green, and lengthened it out with less pitch, so the ball doesn’t run up there and then feed back.
RETROSPECTIVE: 1999 MEMORIAL
25 YEARS AGO...
ELIEVE IT OR NOT —and Gen Z readers may choose the latter—there was a time when a nascent PGA TOUR pro named Tiger Woods was not the undisputed No. 1 golfer in the world.
Tiger Woods began his record run of success in the Memorial Tournament with a two-stroke victory in the 1999 edition
BY BOB BAPTISTYes, seven months after turning pro at age 20, he had lapped the field in the 1997 Masters, winning his first major championship by a dozen strokes. During the course of the next two years, however, even as “Tigermania” exploded, Woods took turns sharing the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking with an aging Greg Norman and two would-be rivals, Ernie Els and David Duval. In a span of 23 months, the foursome traded the top spot among themselves 11 times.
When the 1999 Memorial Tournament began, Duval already had four tournament titles for the year and was perched at the top of the rankings. Woods was No. 2. Plenty was being written and said about a looming rivalry between the two, but nothing had happened on the course to legitimize it. The Memorial marked the first tournament since the Masters that the two were even in the same field.
“It’s hard to make a rivalry when you haven’t faced off in an event, much less a major,” Duval said. “We need to go at it.”
By the end of that week, Duval would still have his No. 1 ranking. But Woods had a win that, in short order, would help cement him atop the golf world for much of the next 11 years. It would turn out to be the first of three wins in a row and a record five victories overall by the Hall of Famer in the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday.
OPPOSITE: Tiger Woods watches his chip shot find the cup for par at the 14th hole after flubbing his previous attempt.
After Woods had dominated the Masters in 1997, he made the surprising decision—to everyone but himself—to revamp his swing. He did it to give his game more shots and less volatility. It had a lot to do with why he won only four PGA TOUR events in the next 26 months after the Masters.
“I told everybody [in 1998] that I was making changes, and it’s just a matter of being patient,” Woods said at the time. “People were saying, ‘Oh, jeez, you’re not winning.’ The press was all over me about it, especially with [Duval] playing well. But I knew the changes I was making were going to be beneficial over the long haul.”
Woods won the Deutsche Bank SAP Open in Germany two weeks before the Memorial, then opened with a 68 at Muirfield Village Golf Club, his first time breaking 70 on the course. He shot 66 for a one-stroke lead after the second round, recording five consecutive birdies despite being in the rough on three of the holes. After an eagle at 11, “I hit some
“It’s hard to make a rivalry when you haven’t faced off in an event, much less a major. We need to go at it.”
DAVID DUVAL
horrible shots on the back nine,” he said, “but they’re not as bad as they used to be, and that’s a big difference.”
Duval was 11 strokes off the lead making the turn in the second round but shot 31 on the back nine to trim five shots off his deficit. But on a warm and windy weekend, he never made a run and tied for third. Els tied for seventh.
Instead, it was another soon-to-be rival of Woods who would closely pursue him to the finish.
Vijay Singh, the 1997 Memorial winner and a player who in a few more years would trade the No. 1 ranking
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Still up by one but in the greenside rough, Woods left his first wedge in the rough, then flopped his next one in the hole from 25 feet for par. That shot always is featured among the all-time Tournament highlights.
with Woods six times, finished the third round two strokes off Woods’ lead. He was the only player who was able to get within three strokes of him on the final day, but he was unable to draw even despite hitting 12 of 14 fairways and 15 of 18 greens in regulation.
Woods matched Singh’s 69 by getting up and down for birdies or pars eight times. He also made a 15-foot birdie putt on the 12th hole before Singh could attempt a 5-footer to tie. The kill shot, though, came two holes later, at 14. Still up by one but in the greenside rough, Woods left his first wedge in the rough, then flopped his next one in the hole from 25 feet for par. That shot always is featured among the all-time Tournament highlights.
“It was the hardest thing,” said Singh, who bogeyed the hole to fall two behind and then missed birdie putts on Nos. 16 and 17. “I played better golf than Tiger did today, and he won.”
Woods said, “chipping and putting and scrambling” were skills he had cultivated since he was a kid. “That’s the way I grew up. I was so wild off the tee that I had to do that.
“It’s part of my game I’ve thrived on, because it will demoralize most opponents. I could sense it in Vijay because he was starting to get a little more quiet.”
As we all know, many other would-be rivals would be left without words in the next decade. MT
Bob Baptist retired from The Columbus Dispatch in 2015 after 37 years as the newspaper’s golf writer. He covered every Memorial Tournament from 1978 through 2014.
Gary Player, captain of the International team, and Jack Nicklaus, captain of the U.S. team, after they agree for the two sides to share the Presidents Cup following a 17-17 tie at The Links at Fancourt in George, South Africa, on Nov. 23, 2003.
The biennial competition between teams of American and International golfers keeps growing and is expected to break attendance records this fall
BY RON GREEN JR.
DAVIS LOVE III STILL REMEMBERS the moment three decades ago when the Presidents Cup began to come alive. Then a member of the PGA TOUR’s policy board, Love was on a plane with Commissioner Tim Finchem and board member Hugh Culverhouse heading to a board meeting.
“Tim said, ‘I have this idea. We’re going to have this new event called the Presidents Cup,’ and he explained the whole thing and said we were going to have it the next year,” Love recalls.
“I told him it sounds great but I’m going with some friends on a three-week safari in Africa at that time next year. Tim said, ‘That’s too bad. You’re going to be playing.’ Hugh said, ‘No, he’s going hunting.’
“I pointed out that Tom Weiskopf had skipped a Ryder Cup to go hunting, but Tim matterof-factly said, ‘No, you’ll play.’ That was the first one, and I played six in a row and loved it.”
When the Presidents Cup is played Sept. 27-29 at Royal Montreal Golf Club, it will mark the 30th anniversary of the biennial matches pitting the United States team against an International team made up of players from countries around the world except Europe. The matches in Canada will also be the latest example of the continuing evolution of the Presidents Cup, which has grown into one of the biggest events in professional golf.
The event was a smashing success at Quail Hollow Club two years ago, drawing more than 200,000 fans through the week and setting sponsorship records with sales eclipsing $30 million.
Those numbers are likely to be surpassed in Montreal, and the expectations for the 2026 Presidents Cup at Medinah outside Chicago continue to grow.
“Going into Charlotte, people said it would be the biggest Presidents Cup ever, and they doubled what they thought they were going to do,” Love said. “Now they’re talking about doubling it in Montreal.”
The Presidents Cup has strong ties to Jack Nicklaus and to Muirfield Village Golf Club where the matches were played in 2013. Nicklaus, the Founder and Host of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, captained four American teams (1998, 2003, 2005 and 2007), and two of his courses (Muirfield Village Golf Club and the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea) have hosted the event.
Finchem foresaw the Presidents Cup becoming the PGA TOUR’s version of the Ryder Cup, which many consider to be the biggest event in golf.
“It was a great idea off the success of the Ryder Cup and international players wanting to play in something like that,” Love said.
The former commissioner understood it would not
happen overnight, and while the competition itself has been one-sided (the U.S. owns a 12-1-1 record), the meaning and magnitude of the Presidents Cup has increased, particularly in recent years.
“I do feel it still has room to grow and keep getting better. If you look at the Ryder Cup, that’s about to be 100 years old, the Presidents Cup is still in its infancy,” said Trevor Immelman, captain of the International team in 2022. “One of the biggest sporting events on the planet is the Ryder Cup. If you’re watching that, but you are an international player, you’re thinking, ‘How do I get to be part of something like this?’
“It’s why we take it so seriously and love it so much. It’s our opportunity to be part of something special like that.”
The Ryder Cup is limited to American and Europeanborn players, but as the game grew globally, the Presidents Cup became a goal for players from the rest of the world. It came to life when Australian-born Greg Norman and South Africa’s Ernie Els were enormous stars, and their involvement helped create roots for the new event.
The initial challenge wasn’t getting international players
to buy into the event. It was, as Love suggested when the original idea was presented to him, getting the top American players to accept it given they already had the Ryder Cup every two years.
“The only original negative was that Americans would have to play every year,” Love said. “We had just played the Ryder Cup, and we were turning around for the Presidents Cup.
“[Finchem] proposed that it would always be played at RTJ [Robert Trent Jones Golf Club outside Washington, D.C.], and we would all stay in cottages around the course. It sounded nice and small, and then it blew up.
“Then it became a goal, all the way to Max Homa saying [in 2022] that if he were commissioner for a day, he would tell Davis Love to pick him for the Presidents Cup team. It went from reluctance in players wanting to play to the top players in the world wanting to be on both sides.”
The first two Presidents Cups were held at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club with the Americans winning both, but it took a decided turn in 1998 when the Internationals rolled to a 20½-11½ victory at Royal Melbourne in Australia.
Suddenly, it felt like the kind of serious competition it was meant to be.
Perhaps no one imagined then that it would be the only International victory in the event to this point.
The two sides played to a 17-17 tie in 2003 in South Africa in the most memorable Presidents Cup. With the match tied after singles, Els and Tiger Woods went to a playoff to decide the winner. After both made long par putts on the third extra hole to extend the match with darkness gathering, the captains—Nicklaus and Gary Player—convinced Finchem that the best alternative was to declare the Presidents Cup a tie, which they did.
“We thought the right thing to do was to tie and to share the cup,” Nicklaus said. “Anybody who didn’t think that was the right thing, you just weren’t there.”
While the moment in South Africa may have set the tone for the Presidents Cup going forward, the International side has not had its hands on the trophy since then.
It has come close. The Americans won by one point in 2015 in South Korea and slipped away with a two-point
victory in Australia in 2019, but the matches contested on American soil have not been particularly close.
“It’s been a long time since 1998, a lot of disappointment. Our goal is to get that turned around,” Immelman said. “It’s been a tough run for us. We obviously have a lot of hurdles trying to corral different cultures and languages, but if you start to pay attention to the Presidents Cup from the one in Australia in 2019, it seems to be getting bigger and better. It’s starting to generate the right amount of interest and get a foothold into finding its identity.”
It’s no secret that it’s easier for the U.S. side to find its identity. Particularly since a task force was created following the Americans’ ugly loss in the 2014 Ryder Cup in Scotland, the U.S. team has had an enhanced sense of continuity, which carries over to the Presidents Cup.
The International team, however, struggled to develop an identity and a playbook for how to bring players from different corners of the world together and create a team atmosphere.
Some things worked. Some didn’t.
Then Els stepped in as captain of the International team
in 2019 and created a model that Immelman built on three years later. (The COVID-19 pandemic postponed the event in 2021.)
“Ernie is our Seve [Ballesteros],” Immelman said. “Initially the idea was there, but it was missing something because the PGA TOUR was running both teams. It didn’t have that edge of competition. The Ryder Cup has always had this feel of the European tour against the Americans, that little edge makes it dramatic and exciting.
“Ernie decided we needed to take more control of our team.”
Els had a shield created to represent the International team and adopted black and gold as the team colors. He did it to create a bond for the players, and some wore it prior to the Presidents Cup. The focus became creating a true team, and it succeeded.
“No disrespect to all the Hall of Fame players who have played before—Vijay [Singh], [Nick] Price, [Retief] Goosen— but it felt like our team was born in 2019. We finally had something to play for that was our own,” Immelman said.
“I tried my best to look after that and take the ball further down the road. Now we have a system in place to where we have guys really paying attention to how to grow and improve.”
In September, the two sides will gather again in Montreal. This time, Canadian Mike Weir, who beat Tiger Woods in singles when the matches were in Montreal in 2007, will captain the International team against Jim Furyk’s American side, trying again to change the storyline. Royal Montreal, the oldest golf course in North America, will be a par-70 test set up at 7,279 yards.
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THE ROYAL MONTREAL GOLF CLUB
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2026
MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
2028
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MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
2030
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“Trying to win is the priority here,” said Weir, 54, who has been an assistant captain the previous two editions. “There’s been a lot of talk about being close the
last couple of years, which has been great. But it would be good to take it over the line.”
Ryan Hart, executive director of the Presidents Cup, told The Globe and Mail in Toronto that Canada is more than ready for the return engagement at historic Royal Montreal. Organizers are expecting approximately 30,000 fans per day.
That’s just one more example that the Presidents Cup truly has become something special.
“Every year it grows exponentially in terms of fans and hospitality,” Love said.
“It’s gone to the Ryder Cup level.” MT
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After assessing the data on the distance elite players are hitting the golf ball today, the game’s governing bodies could come to only one conclusion in response
BY GARY VAN SICKLE
IT IS THE FINAL ROUND of the 2020 United States Open at Winged Foot. The twosome in the final pairing is playing the par-5 ninth hole. Both players hit the fairway with their tee shots. Bryson DeChambeau, in the prime of his “Incredible Bulk” phase to maximize distance, launches a remarkable 375-yard drive. He is going to make eagle here with a 38 foot putt. But first comes the straw that breaks the camel’s ACL—if not in the eyes of golf’s governing bodies, at least in the public’s. The following words were almost certainly not spoken in that fairway, but they could have been: “Nice drive, Mr. DeChambeau and, ahem … you’re still away.” Matthew Wolff, who is 6 feet tall and the opposite of bulked-up, has pumped his drive 381 yards.Thus, two tee shots that once could be seen only in a long-drive contest besmirch/embarrass/expose (your choice) the USGA’s national championship.
Yes, golf’s governing bodies were already several years into collecting distance data and evaluating it in regard to the game’s future, a process delayed by the pandemic. But these two shots shockingly step right out of “Happy Gilmore.” And these guys aren’t just random long-knockers, they’re atop the Open leaderboard.
Just three years later, the U.S. Golf Association and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club announced plans to roll back the golf ball starting in 2028 for professionals and 2030 for amateurs. Some kind of golf ball limits were inevitable. Maybe DeChambeau and Wolff sped up the process.
But that no longer matters. A decision has been reached. The tribe has spoken.
How can one little white ball (or orange or optic yellow or whichever flavor you prefer) be socontroversial? No other major sport has seen its game dramatically change due to a ball. The only nominee is bowling, and two words preclude that from being included in this discussion—“major” and “sport.”
“Modern golf is ruining every golf course in America.”
— BOB JONES,COMMENTING ON THE HASKELL BALL
Golf ’s Big Question for a few decades has been: “Does the golf ball go too far?”
Your Big Answer (probably) has been: “Not when I hit it.”
The ball is a not a new issue in golf. The debate has gone on for almost a century.
“Modern golf is ruining every golf course in America,” Bob Jones said about the significantly longer Haskell rubber-core golf ball that was quickly replacing the gutta percha ball in 1927. “There has been a constant stretching of courses to cope with ABOVE: USGA
Rory McIlroy, teeing off on the 11th hole at Muirfield Village Golf Club in the 2023 Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, is perennially one of golf’s longest hitters.
increased distances. That makes up a vicious circle. Championship caliber links once were 6,000 yards; then 6,500 yards; now they are close to 7,000 yards, and, if it keeps up, may have to go to 7,500.”
Ninety years later, Tiger Woods upped the bidding. “If the game keeps progressing the way it is with technology, the 8,000-yard course is not too far away,” Woods said, “and that’s pretty scary.”
Woods signed on last fall to design an 8,000-yards-plus course in Utah. It is at altitude where the ball flies farther, but its creation nonetheless validates his point.
said in 2018. “I said, ‘Whoops, we’re going to get into a war on how far the golf ball goes.’
“I didn’t think the game of golf should be dictated by how far a golf ball goes. It’s how well you play the golf ball, not how far you hit it. I could pound it out a long way, obviously, but that’s not what I thought the game of golf was all about.”
“If the game keeps progressing the way it is with technology, the 8,000-yard course is not too far away.”
Jack Nicklaus first brought up the distance issue and the ball in 1977. “That was the year in which Titleist brought out the big-dimpled ball and it went farther than anybody else’s ball by quite a ways,” Nicklaus
— TIGER WOODS
Golf legends Arnold Palmer and Gary Player agreed with Nicklaus and issued semi-regular statements about the ever-increasing length of drives in pro golf. Player said before the 2020 Masters, “Don’t be surprised if you see players hit it 500 yards someday because these guys are so big and so strong, it’s frightening.”
A rollback of the golf ball ison the far horizon for now, so that should prevent Player’s 500-yard nightmare. However,
the final chapter has yet to be written about the decision from the USGA and R&A. Not everyone is happy, including some players, tour officials and manufacturers. The late rocker Warren Zevon recorded a song that included the lyrics, “Send lawyers, guns and money. …” Expect two of those three to play a part in the rollback’s run-up.
We can agree on this much—the golf ball does go far. Technology in golf equipment has gotten too good, if that’s possible. The modern golf ball is the best of both of our former old worlds. It flies like a distance ball but spins and performs like a high-end balata ball.
and over-sized driver heads. You rode another decade of gains in the 2000s (in your 50s and 60s) thanks to the ball revolution led by the Titleist Pro V1.
Imagine getting longer off the tee for 20 to 30 years as you careened toward Social Security? It happened for a lot of senior golfers who caught the technology boom at just the right age like a professional surfer luckily catching a big wave.
“Don’t be surprised if you see players hit it 500 yards someday because these guys are so big and so strong, it’s frightening.”
— GARY PLAYER
If you’re Boomer-aged, you enjoyed a Golden Age of Golf Technology. You picked up significant driving distance during the 1990s (in your 40s or 50s) with the rise of metal woods
We still don’t have George Jetson’s flying cars or the bionic body parts of Col. Steve Austin (“The Six-Million-Dollar Man”), but golf technology is clearly on a roll.
Many golf manufacturers are using AI (Artificial Intelligence, not former basketball diva Allen Iverson) to design even better clubs and balls. A few companies have produced clubs using 3D printers.
Last year, four-time major champion Rory McIlroy was asked the last time he had to hit 6-iron or more into a par-4 green. He couldn’t remember.
The pace of these technological gains is another reason the USGA and R&A felt as if they had to move on the ball. If we were at 380-yard drives in 2020 at the U.S. Open, where were we going to be in 2030?
Digest some of these numbers:
• Just about the only golf courses big enough (sort of) to hold today’s elite pros are the ones in use on the PGA TOUR and major championship schedule. And they keep get-
ting lengthened. Torrey Pines’ South Course at the 2008 U.S. Open played 7,603 yards. Erin Hills at the 2017 U.S. Open hit 7,741. The 2021 PGA Championship at the Ocean Course measured 7,876. Meanwhile, the antiquated Old Course at St. Andrews is forced to use tee boxes from three adjacent properties—the New Course, the Eden and the Himalayas putting course—to stay relevant for The Open Championship. Technically, the tee box at the famed Road Hole is located out of bounds. Desperate times, desperate measures.
• The average driving distance by a robotic swing machine was 339.4 yards in recent golf-ball testing conducted by MyGolfSpy.com. That includes roll, based on a USGA roll-out formula. A Titleist Pro V1 model led the balls tested at 348.0 yards. The robot’s clubhead speed was set at 115 mph but … wait;
• The top 10 PGA TOUR players in 2020-21 averaged 124.8 mph, almost 10 mph more than that robot. USGA
In 2022, 23 players averaged above 120 mph swing speed. No wonder 350-yard drives, once considered preposterous, are not uncommon. One mph of clubhead speed translates to approximately 2.3 yards of carry;
• The average driving distance on the PGA TOUR in 1990 was 262.3 yards. Tom Purtzer ranked No. 1 at 279.6 yards. By 2001, the average jumped to 278.8 (nearly matching Purtzer) and 13 players averaged more than 290. Three years later in 2004, 14 players averaged over 300 yards per drive;
In real terms, you will probably hit the ball about the same distance as you did in 2012 or therabouts.
• From 1999 to 2023, the average driving distance on the PGA TOUR increased from 271.6 to 299.9 yards;
• In 2023, 33 PGA TOUR players averaged above 310 yards per drive. The average drive on the Korn Ferry Tour, the PGA TOUR’s feeder system, was 306.2 last year, and 27 players averaged over 315 yards—53 yards longer than in 1990.
Think about what a 320- or 350-yard drive means in pro golf. On an “outlandishly long” par 4 of 520 yards, a 320-yard drive leaves a 200-yard approach. That’s a 7-iron these days, maybe an 8-iron. A 350 yard tee ball leaves 170 yards in. That’s a 9-iron or a pitching wedge. Even factoring in that most irons have been de-lofted over the past 20 years, meaning yesterday’s 7-iron is today’s 9-iron, that’s still a prodigious change.
Last year, four-time major champion Rory McIlroy was asked the last time he had to hit 6-iron or more into a par-4 green. He couldn’t remember. Those clubs are mainly needed for second shots into par-5 greens.
The USGA expects its rollback to have only a modest effect. Big hitters, like tour players, will give up 10 to 15 yards; elite male amateurs, 9-12; LPGA players, 5-7; and the rest of us hacks, five yards or fewer. If true, that figures to be less than
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one-fifth of the distance gains that equipment provided over the last 30 years. In real terms, you will probably hit the ball about the same distance as you did in 2012 or thereabouts.
Some rollback critics argue that the ball isn’t the cause of the distance problem, it’s everything else:
• The increasingly complex and lighter/stronger/better multi-alloy shafts, which help boost swing speed;
• Launch monitors and computers that identified energy transfer and created a new understanding of ball spin and launch angles, leading to maximizing distance;
• Stronger, more athletic golfers. This is the Tiger Woods effect. He single-handedly brought weight training to the sport when he broke out on TOUR and drove it 40 or 50 yards past his playing partners. Rory McIlroy posed for a Golf Digest cover a few years back after he’d taken weight work seriously, and he was as sculpted as a Greek god;
ular that it drives recreational golfers out of the game.
The pro tours don’t want anything that could potentially make their product less entertaining. Are slightly shorter drives any less interesting? Tour execs don’t seem to want to find out. It’s all about self-interest and business. The good of the game? That’s secondary.
“It’s no different than when the R&A switched from the small (British) ball to the large (American) ball. … You could hit it for nine miles and just wave back at everybody else.”
JACK NICKLAUS
• Bigger athletes. The game’s greats once upon a time were Bob Jones, 5 feet 8 inches; Ben Hogan and Tom Watson, 5-9; Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, 5-10; Sam Snead, 5-11. Of more recent vintage are Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth, 6-1; Jon Rahm and Vijay Singh, 6-2; Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els, 6-3; Dustin Johnson, 6-4; and Tony Finau, 6-5.
Shorter players are still stars—McIlroy is 5-9, Viktor Hovland, the 2023 Memorial winner, and Justin Thomas are 5-10 and Open champion Brian Harman is just 5-7. However, 30 percent of TOUR players were 6-2 or taller in 2021, according to the website GlobalGolfPost.com.
Most rollback criticism comes from those who have a dog in this fight. Long-hitting players fear they will lose their competitive advantage. The changes will be proportional, actually. Equipment companies likewise fear losing their marketplace advantage (if they have one). They also worry about a decline in sales if the rollback proves to be so unpop-
Different sets of equipment rules for pros and amateurs, known as bifurcation, would have been an obvious solution. But the equipment companies weren’t having any part of that. That left the USGA and the R&A with two choices— do nothing or do something that affects professionals and amateurs alike, even though it’s not recreational golfers who hit the ball too far.
Doing nothing was not a viable option, the governing bodies felt. Enter the rollback. Before the 2002 Masters, Nicklaus speculated about the governing bodies issuing specifications so that manufacturers could create a standardized ball in an effortto rein in distance.
“It’s no different than when the R&A switched from the small [British] ball to the large [American] ball,” Nicklaus said then, recalling the 1974 change. “The small ball was fun. I loved playing it. You could hit it for nine miles and just wave back at everybody. It was easy to play. And it didn’t curve very much. But was it right? You could just make golf courses disappear. That’s why they switched.”
Sound familiar? The golf ball went far in 2023, was easy to play and didn’t curve much. But is that the right thing for the game, at least at the elite level?
Right or wrong, a distance rollback of the ball is the answer that the USGA and R&A have given. MT
Gary Van Sickle has covered golf since 1980, including 140 major championships, 15 Ryder Cups and more than 400 tournaments.
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A man can do a lot in 50 years.
Build on a dream that is his alone.
Think it, then shape it and sculpt it— a monument or masterpiece there or here. But a vision can’t survive without action. Without a pulse or push to make it happen. And he must ask himself a question: Am I a dreamer or entrepreneur?
If the latter, then how should he proceed?
There is no blueprint to a masterpiece. It becomes because of who he is while he sees beyond doubts in small seeds. He must know himself—and risk himself. Only to know he can trust himself to apply his instincts and refine them so he ensures that his dream will succeed.
Take to the ground, create something big. Not a thing, but an ultimate expression. Bring new sunshine to a familiar piece of home and then invite the world in for his gig.
Leave something behind, a monument to what his father always asked of him—his best shot. Every man has a masterpiece within. If only he has the will to dig.
A man can do a lot in 50 years.
So very much, in fact, in 50 years. And some men do. Some men do.
— David Shedloski
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