Summer golf is officially here as the PGA Tour heads to Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio for the Memorial Tournament.
Affectionately known as ‘Jack’s Place’, with Jack Nicklaus overseeing the design of the course, the PGA Tour's best players will be in attendance, with only Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa absent as the two-time major winner continues to manage his fitness.
Nicklaus intended Muirfield Village to test every club in the bag and is extremely demanding for every shot from tee to green.
It’s a long course at more than 7,500 yards, so shorter hitters are immediately at a disadvantage off the tee, but with water hazards, bunkers and lush, penal rough lining the fairways, players can’t afford to spray it all over the place, and shorter hitters have had plenty of joy here over the years.
Owing to its difficulty off the tee and its firm greens, the putting surfaces will often be missed, testing every player’s short game skills, while the speed of the bentgrass greens will also demand total concentration on every putt.
It’s one of the toughest tests the players will face all year – as seen by Shane Lowry’s 13-over-par round of 85 on Sunday in 2024 – and anybody reaching double figures under par will likely be very close to winning.
With it being a long course and demanding on approach, it’s no surprise that a number of players have played well at Muirfield Village and Augusta National down the years, with the likes of Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama, Justin Rose, Tiger Woods, Kenny Perry, Ernie Els all winning the Memorial.
Hovland and Morikawa miss out but the rest of the PGA Tour’s elite will tee it up including Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, both of whom feature in our Power Rankings.
Find out the rest of the top five below.
5 - Matt Fitzpatrick
It’s a tough ask for Matt Fitzpatrick to win a fourth PGA Tour event in the space of just over two months, but his game is in the best place it’s ever been. His 2022 peak that saw him win the US Open was a time when the Englishman had tacked on some substantial distance, whereas now his game is much more well rounded.
Fitzpatrick had a forgivable dip at the Truist Championship, though Quail Hollow has never quite suited his eye, and responded with a credible T14 at the PGA Championship.
Memorial demands tee-to-green precision and that’s the crux of Fitzpatrick’s game right now, ranking fourth in the field for SG: T2G across the last eight events as per Golf Betting System.. He’s finding fairways, finding greens, and when he does miss a green, his short game is as good as it’s ever been.
Fitzpatrick has an up-and-down record at Muirfield Village, missing the cut in two of his last six outings and finishing T31 last year. But his other three appearances produced solo third, a tie for ninth and a tie for fifth, suggesting he’s more than comfortable at Jack’s Place.
4 - Ludvig Aberg
Ludvig Aberg has done just about everything but win recently. After a T3 at the Arnold Palmer, he had the Players Championship in the palm of his hands before inexplicably finding water on back-to-back holes down the stretch to finish T5. The T21 at the Masters actually felt like a disappointment for the Swede on the back of two excellent showings at Augusta, but he’s since been T4, T8 and T4 at the RBC Heritage, the Truist and the PGA Championship – all demanding different things.
Aberg was solid at the Charles Schwab Challenge, but having been on the fringes throughout, was never quite able to make a charge.
With Muirfield Village challenging all aspects of a player’s game, few are better suited than Aberg. If there has been a weakness in Aberg’s game, it was that his short game was never much better than okay, but even that has significantly improved this season. After ranking 129th for SG: ARG on the PGA Tour last season, Aberg currently ranks 21st.
Players with good Masters records have often played well at Jack’s Place and Aberg is no different, finishing T5 and T16 in his first two outings.
3 - Cameron Young
Another contender in this week’s field playing the golf of his life, Cameron Young already has a Players Championship win to his name as well as a Signature Event from the Cadillac Championship and is now bidding for a second.
Like Fitzpatrick, perhaps it’s too much to expect Young to have a third landmark win since the middle of March, but his game is right where it needs to be.
He’s as long as he’s always been, he’s more accurate than in previous years, his approach play is the best it’s ever been and his short game has been stellar. Young had always been a bit of a streaky putter but has gained strokes in seven of his 11 appearances on the greens this season, spiking superbly for his wins at Sawgrass and Doral.
Young’s record at Muirfield Village leaves a little to be desired with form figures of T60-MC-T50-T25, but this is the best version of Young we’ve ever seen, and it’s hard to see him not improving on that.
2 - Rory McIlroy
After the somewhat controversial absence of Rory McIlroy from this event last season, the two-time Masters champion returns to Jack’s Place. Twelve months ago, McIlroy looked visibly different. His form had dropped off post-Masters win, and the decision to skip the Memorial raised plenty of eyebrows, prioritising the following week’s RBC Canadian Open, in what turned out to be the worst performance of his professional career.
McIlroy now looks invigorated again. He’s won a second Masters title and a sixth major, and while he’s still clearly targeting the biggest events of the year, he’s wisely opting to rub shoulders with the game’s elite prior to the US Open in a fortnight’s time.
We’ve seen precious little of McIlroy this season. The Memorial will be just his sixth PGA Tour event in addition to the two majors, but the Northern Irishman has, by and large, played well this year.
His T14 at at Pebble Beach was better than the finish suggested, following that up with a T2 at the Genesis where McIlroy just couldn’t chase down Jacob Bridgeman.
McIlroy played well at the Arnold Palmer before his withdrawal through injury, the effects of which were clearly still felt at TPC Sawgrass the following week. The Northern Irishman was in the mix at the Truist before a poor Saturday saw him fall out of contention, and after a shocking start to the PGA Championship in which a battle to make the cut was on the cards, McIlroy got himself within three of the lead heading into Sunday.
It’s rather surprising that in 13 appearances, McIlroy has never won the Memorial, but he does have five top-10s and four top-20s, and perhaps this is the year he’ll finally get over the line.
1 - Scottie Scheffler
It’s hard to see Scottie Scheffler’s winless streak going on much longer, and what better place to break it than at a venue where he’s won the last two years?
To put up an average of 3.25 true strokes gained in five events and not win one feels statistically impossible, but three straight solo-runner-up finishes will do that. For the Masters, Scheffler was never quite there, but the play-off loss at the RBC Heritage will have hurt. At the Cadillac, he ran into an inspired Cameron Young. Similarly at the CJ Cup, it took a score of 30-under-par to win, with Scheffler coming solo third.
The bigger surprise was Scheffler holding a share of the lead after the first round of the PGA Championship and eventually finishing T14.
If there’s a slight concern for Scheffler this week it’s that the short game that was immaculate at the start of the season has taken a slight dip in the last few weeks, and it’ll be hard to win at Muirfield without being able to get up and down.
But his long game is looking back to its best, and if a few more putts can drop, Scheffler’s second win of 2026 could be right around the corner.
Any odds displayed were correct at the time of writing and are subject to fluctuation.
