Muirfield Village Turns U.S. Open-Sinister for the Memorial's Final Round
DUBLIN, Ohio — Late comedian Rodney Dangerfield once observed, “I went to a fight the other night … and a hockey game broke out.”
Some professional golfers went to a PGA Tour tournament here the other day … and a U.S. Open broke out. (Which meant Phil Mickelson didn’t win. OK, he didn’t play, he’s still MIA but FYI, he hasn’t officially withdrawn yet from the upcoming U.S. Open at The Country Club.)
That’s enough cheap shots. Sunday at the Memorial Tournament was all about the tough shots at Muirfield Village Golf Club.
You could tell it was U.S. Open-like because just about everybody who was anybody went backward. Your winner was University of Florida alum Billy Horschel, who took a five-shot advantage in the final round, posted an even-par 72 that was more exciting than it sounds and finished seven shots better than all but four players.
Aaron Wise was second, four strokes back, on a day when his 1-under 71 qualified as an Arnold Palmer-like charge in tough scoring conditions.
“You can’t press too much,” said Wise, a 25-year-old University of Oregon alum who was born in Cape Town, South Africa. “You can barely hold some of the greens, never mind attack some of the pins.”
The golf course carnage was clearly U.S. Open quality. Cameron Young, a recent PGA Championship contender, opened the Memorial with a 69 and finished it with an 84 that featured a pair of 7s and an 8 — not good in poker, even worse in pro golf. Rickie Fowler, that guy from the TV commercials, posted 75-77 on the weekend. Adam Scott closed with 80. Brandon Wu followed his second-round 69 with a pair of 80s and former Ryder Cup hero Ryan Moore locked up 70th place, also known as DFL — that’s Dead Last — with 78-79 on the weekend.
The tournament morphed into a survival test in the final round. Isn’t that precisely the description of a U.S. Open?
“Definitely,” Wise said. “You had to be on top of your game. It was playing tough. The rough was maybe just under U.S. Open length but the greens might have been firmer than any U.S. Open I ever played. Billy (Horschel) had five or six shots land by the pin and he had 50 feet coming back down the hill.”
It was Horschel’s U.S. Open — sorry, Memorial Tournament — to win and he won it. Sunday’s finale was nothing like the first three rounds. Horschel racked up a flawless third-round 65, got to 13 under par, opened a five-stroke edge and went 44 straight holes without a bogey. He was making it look easy. That bogey-free streak ended on the 50th hole but a series of clutch putts on the back nine helped atone for three bogeys in the final round, only two of which mattered.
Wise and Joaquin Niemann inched closer to Horschel at times but never closer than two shots. Niemann evaporated with a final-hole double. Wise pushed Horschel the way to the par-5 15th, where his third shot came rolled back to within two feet for a tap-in birdie. It would have been Game On except then Horschel rolled in a 53-foot eagle putt that took so long to reach the cup you could have measured it with a sundial.
That putt was the turning point. Or the exclamation point, take your pick. If Horschel doesn’t birdie the 15th, Wise cuts his lead to two. Instead, the eagle gave him a four-shot edge with three to play. Three dangerous holes at Muirfield Village, yes, but Horschel was all about his course management strategy on this Sunday.
“I’ve watched Tiger and Jack play enough,” Horschel said. “I learned that when you have a lead, you don’t have to do anything special, just don’t give any shots back. I did give a few back but that eagle at 15 was huge.”
Give credit to Horschel for tiptoeing through a minefield as carefully as a man wearing oversized clown shoes. He had 13 pars, 2 birdies and 3 bogeys on a day when the field’s scoring average was 74.21, more than two shots over par. The day’s low round was 69, posted by four different players.
It was a day to survive, like a U.S. Open. Or a tiresome reality show that has outlived its expiration date.
It’s a shame that Muirfield Village will likely never get its U.S Open moment. It is clearly worthy. One strike against it is its date. It’s locked into a Memorial Day-related frame, putting it in June, usually two weeks in front of the Open.
Many have suggested it, including this typist dating back several decades. The local newspaper proposed in 2013 that the course host a PGA Championship. That didn’t happen but it is the only course to have held a Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup and Presidents Cup, in addition to a U.S. Amateur.
A second strike is that the U.S. Open is already booked for 12 of the next 15 years.
So tournament host Jack Nicklaus will have to settle for U.S. Open-like conditions. He was clearly pleased during his CBS guest spot with Jim Nantz with how the course played — thick rough, firm greens that had some speed — or “spice” as he likes to say.
You have to read between the lines with Jack, of course, and listen for the hint of glee in his voice when a player either faces a nasty shot or, as he prefers, pulls one off.
At the par-3 12th, Jack’s version of Augusta National’s famed par-3 12th, he commented, “It’s such a good hole.”
Earlier in the week, he’d talked about how he built the hole with the idea that it would play around 140-150 yards, which gave players a fair chance to hit a green that has no bailout. Even Augusta National’s 12th hole has a little bailout.
“They played it about 186 yards today,” Nicklaus noted during Sunday’s telecast. “That’s a hard shot.”
The 12th ranked as the second toughest hole. It gave up four birdies and six double bogeys. It’s maybe not such a great hole at that yardage, just a beast. Which sounds like a U.S. Open nominee.
The 12th nearly rattled Horschel, who went long into the back bunker and short with his explosion shot, which hung up in thick rough short of the green. After Wise saved par from the same bunker with a 10-footer, Horschel poured in a four-footer to save a bogey 4.
Horschel made big pars at 13 and 14 after getting in a bit of trouble. Then came the 15th, however, and from there, he was on NDCC — No Disaster Cruise Control.
It was worth the wait for him to win here because his wife and three children were not on site for any of his previous seven PGA Tour victories.
So that monkey, Horschel joked, is finally off his back.
“I've just always wanted that one moment where my family runs out, the kids run out, that I can look back for many years to come and they can look back at for their entire life of being on the green and congratulating their father for a victory,” he said. “So it's special to have that video and those photos for the rest of our lives.”
The tournament host, sitting next to Horschel during a post-mortem victory interview, joked, “This is the Memorial Tournament. We own that footage. You’ll have to buy it.”
Horschel laughed hard, which only made Nicklaus laugh even harder.
It is worth noting that Horschel is getting on a roll. He has won three significant titles in the last 15 months — the Dell Technologies Match Play, where he beat Scottie Schefffler in the final; the European Tour’s BMW PGA Championship; and now the Memorial.
His only top-10 finish in a major came in a U.S. Open, and he feels as if the Open favors his game more than any other major — solid iron play and good putting. He’ll take a week off, then fly to Massachusetts Sunday morning before the Open at The Country Club in Brookline. He doesn’t know much about the course, other than having watched footage of the 1999 Ryder Cup.
“My wife played in a pro-am there last summer,” Horschel joked, “so even she has more insight about the course than I do.”
But the fact that Horschel won at Muirfield Village may prove noteworthy.
“This course is very U.S. Open-like with how firm and fast the greens are,” Horschel said. “The fairways are a little more generous than maybe we’re going to see but it’s a second-shot-oriented golf course and you have to control your iron play, like a U.S. Open.”