Memorial Tournament 2017: 5 groups to watch in Rounds 1 & 2
By Luke Norris
Here are five groups to watch at the Memorial Tournament, Jack Nicklaus’ annual PGA TOUR event from Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio.
The Memorial Tournament, founded and hosted annually by the great Jack Nicklaus in 1976, is the penultimate stop on the PGA TOUR before Erin Hills and the U.S. Open and many of the top players in the world are at Muirfield Village this week to get some final swings in before the second major championship of the season.
120 players will tee it up at Muirfield Village, including six of the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking. The Memorial field would have included seven top-10 players but Rory McIlroy is still suffering from a rib injury and has decided to skip the event in hopes of being healthy enough to tackle Erin Hills in two weeks. The highest-ranked golfer in the field this week is world No. 1 Dustin Johnson and he’ll be joined from the top ten by Jason Day, Hideki Matsuyama, Jordan Spieth, Jon Rahm and Adam Scott.
37-year-old journeyman William McGirt won the Memorial a season ago, fending off runner-up Jon Curran in a playoff, and is also in the field this week. He’ll be in one of the featured groups this week alongside Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson and we’ll get to that group in just a little while.
As I mentioned, many of the world’s top players are in attendance this week and many of them are paired together for the first two rounds, which should make for some good television over the next couple of days. So without further ado, here are the five groups you need to be watching on Thursday and Friday for the 42nd edition of the Memorial Tournament.