The third round of the Memorial Tournament was stopped Saturday afternoon after thunderstorms, torrential rain, strong winds and hail tore through Muirfield Village, forcing officials to call off play for the day. The PGA Tour said the round will resume Sunday at 7.30am.
That pause came while JT Poston and Ryan Gerard were tied for the outright lead at nine under after five holes, with Harris English in the clubhouse at 69 and three under. Rory McIlroy had battled to one under after 16 holes and Scottie Scheffler had also moved to one under before the stoppage, keeping both in touch with the leaders as the weather closed in.
The delay mattered immediately because only 21 players finished the round before play was halted, leaving the leaderboard in flux and forcing the tournament into a compressed Sunday schedule. Final-round tee times are now expected between 11am and 12.45pm off holes 1 and 10 in groups of three, a tighter format than the field had used earlier in the week.
The weather was not a brief interruption. A TV tower blew down near the tenth green, a sharp sign of how hard the conditions had turned at the course, and course officials said at 6pm local time that play would not continue. Sam Burns was one shot behind the co-leaders through six holes, while Scheffler, who began the day 10 shots back and bogeyed the first hole, had surged with a birdie-birdie-eagle run before a birdie from about eight feet to open the back nine.
Scheffler’s charge still ran into resistance. He needed a three-putt par from about 65 feet on the par-five 11th and then bogeyed the par-three 12th after finding a back bunker, a reminder that the course was playing as much against the players as the leaderboard was against them.
If the weather holds, the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday will restart Sunday morning and finish on a schedule that leaves little room for error. If it does not, the day could belong as much to the storm over Dublin, Ohio, as to the man who eventually wins the trophy.
