The Memorial Tournament
Emiliano Grillo had not won on the PGA Tour since October 2015 at the Frys.com Open (now known as the Fortinet Championship). He had come into last week with some solid form (two top-7s in his four lead-in starts) and two top-10s at Colonial in the last five years. Grillo, tipped in this column last week at 100-1 and ending with an 80-1 closing price, had a two-shot lead heading to the 18th tee on Sunday but hit his drive into an aqueduct, which took the ball back 150 yards before stopping against a rock. He decided to take a penalty stroke and landed a two-putt from 20 yards to tie with Adam Schenk. Harry Hall led after each of the first three rounds but failed to save par and missed the playoff and finished T-3 along with OWGR No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.
Grillo won the Charles Schwab Challenge on the second playoff hole and Schenk settled for his second runner-up finish (Valspar Championship) in 2023.
Grillo (110-1 this week) will be part of an elite field this week at The Memorial Tournament hosted by Jack Nicklaus.
That elite field playing just outside of Columbus, Ohio, consists of the entire OWGR Top 5, including OWGR No. 1 Scheffler (6-1). World No. 2 Jon Rahm (15-2) won this event in 2020 and should have had back-to-back titles but was informed coming off the 18th green after Saturday’s third round that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and had to withdraw from the 2021 Memorial Tournament after having built a six-stroke lead. The biggest beneficiary of Rahm’s withdrawal was Patrick Cantlay (10-1), who not only ended up winning the 2021 Memorial but also was the 2019 event champion.
Rory McIlroy (14-1) has just one top-10 in his last five trips to Muirfield Village.
Xander Schauffele (16-1) rounds out the OWGR Top 5 and has four consecutive top-20s here.
Viktor Hovland (22-1) was on the first page of the leaderboard heading into Sunday last week at Colonial, just one week removed from the near-miss at the PGA before a 3-over round dropped him to T-16. Collin Morikawa (25-1) has been disappointing lately all around but does have a victory on this course in the Workday Charity Open back in 2020 and was runner-up in a playoff to Cantlay in 2021. Justin Thomas (28-1) was the man Morikawa defeated in that Workday playoff in 2020.
Jason Day (30-1) lives in Columbus and would love to win a “home game” this week, especially after getting back in the winner’s circle for the first time in five years, three weeks ago at the AT&T Byron Nelson. Also priced at 30-1 is Tyrrell Hatton.
Next on the board are several players who have been battling various injuries and illnesses, including Cameron Young (35-1), 2014 Memorial champion Hideki Matsuyama (40-1) and Jordan Spieth (40-1).
Sungjae Im (35-1) won three weeks ago in his homeland of South Korea but has missed two consecutive cuts. Matt Fitzpatrick (40-1) was third here in 2020.
Billy Horschel (125-1) is the defending champion of the Memorial Tournament but has made only six of 12 cuts this year with just one top-10 finish.
The Event
The Memorial Tournament was founded in 1976 by Jack Nicklaus at his “home course,” Muirfield Village Golf Club. There is no title sponsor for the event but Workday, a cloud computing and enterprise software company, took over as the presenting sponsor last year and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, based in Columbus, is the primary charitable beneficiary of the tournament. Nicklaus first spoke of wanting to host his own tournament at the 1966 Masters and made it a reality 10 years later. Jack has always modeled this event after the Masters and golf viewers with a keen eye will notice various similarities between Muirfield Village and Augusta National. Like the Masters, tradition is a major focal point at the Memorial. The event honors historical and accomplished figures in the game of golf every year and this year’s honoree is Ben Crenshaw, the 1984 and 1995 Masters champion and victorious Team USA captain at the 1999 Ryder Cup. Instead of the two-year PGA Tour exemption that an event winner usually receives, the Memorial champion earns a three-year exemption. The Memorial is only one of five events on the PGA Tour to have "invitational" status, which means a smaller field than usual (ordinarily 120 players).
The field consists of 120 players invited using the following criteria:
