Jack Nicklaus said this week that he built Muirfield Village Golf Club more than 50 years ago on land where he once hunted with his father, turning a patch of undeveloped ground northwest of Columbus into the home of the Memorial Tournament. He said he picked the site from 11 possibilities, bought the property for $155,000 and later sold it to the members for the same amount, taking no profit from what he created.
The timing matters because the Memorial is marking its 50th anniversary this week, and the event has again been held up as a model for the PGA Tour’s future. Nicklaus, now 86, said he tried to treat players the way he would want to be treated himself, a standard he believes the tournament still follows. “One thing I tried to do is I knew how I would like to be treated as a player and where I went and what I did. And, you know, there’s some tournaments that did it pretty well. Some did it fair. I think we do it pretty well here,” he said.
The Memorial has long been tied to Augusta National and the Masters, and Nicklaus said the course has been a work in progress since before the first event. That first Memorial, in 1976, was won by Roger Maltbie, who wore patchwork plaid pants, and the tournament has kept its place because Nicklaus built it around the player experience as much as the golf course. It also sits in an ideal spot on the calendar, two weeks before the U.S. Open, which helps explain why so many top players keep showing up.
But the broader question around the PGA Tour is still unresolved. The event is being cast as a template even as next year’s schedule is expected to look little different from this year’s, which leaves the bigger reshaping pushed toward 2028. Scottie Scheffler, who is trying to become the first player to win the Memorial three consecutive times, said Mr. Nicklaus and his family are part of the fabric of the tournament, and that this is a special place to compete in front of the fans while carrying on that legacy.
