The Memorial Tournament: Power ranking the top ten golfers at Muirfield Village
Over the years, Tiger’s developed a fairly routine schedule. He knows how to navigate through the calendar to best set himself up for success and has some favorite tournaments along the way.
This is one of them.
Woods is a five-time Memorial Tournament winner: 1999, 2000, 2001, 2009 and 2012.
"“I’ve always loved this golf course. This golf course is certainly one of the best on the PGA Tour. It’s hard. It’s straightforward,” Woods said in 2009. “They made changes to it, seems like, every year. Jack makes positive changes. He makes it a little bit harder, little bit more difficult. I think that over the years I’ve really enjoyed coming back here and playing.”"
Woods rested the entire way between his Masters win and the PGA Championship. He’s not doing so this time as he looks to bounce back from his missed cut at Bethpage.
Woods’ only win this season was at Augusta, but in seven starts, that was his only MC among six top-30s including a T10 at the WGC-Mexico and a WGC-Match Play quarterfinals appearance.
Along with his wins at Memorial, he’s got three other top-fives. In 2018, Woods finished T23 (72-67-78-72). It was a great ball striking week (300.9 distance, 71.43% driving, 75% GIR) but the putter was not there.
Woods doesn’t have enough measured rounds to qualify for PGA Tour statistical ranks, but he’s gaining .84 strokes on the greens in 2019 and 1.457 overall.
The Big Cat clearly is doing everything in his powers to set himself up for Pebble Beach coming up, but he may be fired up after his disappointing showing at the PGA.
Justin Thomas is back in the field this week after missing time since the Masters with a wrist injury, but I couldn’t quite pull the trigger. Louis Oosthuizen and Jason Kokrak are playing well of late, but both also have health concerns, so tread lightly.
Bryson DeChambeau is also the defending champion. He’s an intriguing pick as the world No. 8, but three missed cuts and no top-10s on Tour since January made me leave him just outside the top 10.
There’s a lot of rain in the forecast, particularly for practice rounds and early in the tournament. Keep an eye out for what the best weather draws are and perhaps lean even more heavily toward the big hitters this week on a soft golf course.