The heavens have a way of dropping seas of liquid sunshine on the Memorial Tournament, so it makes sense Muirfield Village Golf Club was birthed in mud after being conceived by a Golden Bear.
The light bulb first went off to build a Columbus-area championship golf course and accompanying PGA Tour event in 1964, after the PGA Championship at Columbus Country Club drew a big crowd. But the idea did not germinate until 1966 at Augusta National Golf Club, where a 26-year-old Jack Nicklaus and friend Ivor Young began to dream a few days before Nicklaus won his sixth major championship.
“What if…?”
The friends from Columbus envisioned something akin to the Masters coming to their hometown, though Nicklaus insists there was never any intent to turn the Memorial into a carbon copy of the Masters, or become a fifth major championship.
It took another 10 years for the Memorial to come into existence, and during the lead-up to the first tournament in 1976 Nicklaus sent Young to find a site worthy of a world-class course.
Finding perfect piece of golf course property was group effort
Nicklaus and Young joined with former Ohio State quarterback Pandel Savic and businessmen Robert Hoag and David Sherman, with help from golf course architect Pete Dye, to zero in on farm acreage in Dublin, which then had a population of about 700, and the work began. PGA Tour commissioner Joe Dey visited the site early in the process.
See Jack Nicklaus explain his process for naming Muirfield Village
Jack Nicklaus explains his reasoning for naming Muirfield Village Golf Club during a press conference prior to the Memorial Tournament on May 27.
“Joe came out here and walked in the mud with me,” Nicklaus said.
Construction began in 1972, and while traipsing through muck up to their ankles, Nicklaus and Dey kicked around names for the new golf course, including “The New Course.”
Luckily, that one didn’t win out.
“We named the area Muirfield Village. I didn’t want to name it directly Muirfield because I didn’t want it to be a dead copy,” Nicklaus said, referencing the Scottish course where he won the 1966 British Open. “I was so happy with what happened with me at Muirfield, winning the British Open at a place where I wasn’t supposed to win. It was a golf course with very narrow fairways, very high rough, not typical Jack Nicklaus, they thought in 1966, could win at. I was so proud of that, this place became Muirfield Village.”
Nicklaus, from Upper Arlington, emphasized that “Village” has always followed “Muirfield.”
“It’s never been Muirfield,” he said. “Always Muirfield Village, and then we finally just settled on Muirfield Village Golf Club.”
As for naming the Memorial Tournament, which early on had a working title of the Memorial at Muirfield Village, that credit goes to Dey.
“We’re walking through the mud, which is what it was when we first got here, and trying to figure out what kind of concept we want for the tournament,” Nicklaus said. “Joe came up with the idea of, he says, ‘It’s Memorial Day. And around Memorial time why don’t we honor the past people who have contributed to the game of golf in the past?
“I said, ‘Fantastic,’ … but I don’t want to be selecting those people. I don’t think that’s the right way to do it.”
Dey offered another idea, of creating a Captains Club of golf dignitaries who would “take the pressure off you and your shoulders,” Nicklaus said, adding the Captains Club not only would select the annual honoree but serve as the tournament’s “guiding light.”
Jack Nicklaus modeled the Memorial loosely on the Masters
Among the first captains was Clifford Roberts, chairman of Augusta National, who told Nicklaus “You’ve got an opportunity to do here in 10 years what it’s taken us 40 to do at Augusta.”
Roberts opened his books to Nicklaus, offering support and guidance for “whatever you want to know.”
Nearly 50 years later, and Nicklaus takes great pride in what the Memorial has become, and how it helped Dublin grow from a sleepy bedroom community into a 1980s hot spot for growth in Franklin County.
“You look back at what happened and where it went and how it started from a very small, humble beginning,” Nicklaus said. “The whole idea of the Memorial Tournament was to bring golf back to Columbus, a place where I grew up, to thank the people in central Ohio for the support they gave me through all my career.”
As for Muirfield Village’s initial design, Nicklaus would do it differently today.
“From a design standpoint, I wouldn’t have designed the golf course this way,” he said. “What I mean by that is I designed it basically for a tournament, and spent the next 50 years trying to ease it enough so the average member can play it. I would have done it the other way around, would have had it a little more user friendly to start with, which is what I do now, and if I want to lengthen a hole here or there to handle a tournament, I would do it that way.”
Live and learn.
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“In those days, that’s what the (golf course) owner wanted, but most owners today want a golf course for their membership, and if they want to have an event to be able to stretch it to handle that event. I think that’s a much more practical way of playing golf for 51 weeks of the year.”
But for that 52nd week? Muirfield Village, especially when the heavens open the floodgates, is a beast of a test for the world’s best golfers. The player who wins at Jack’s Place deserves a toast, whether with a famous clubhouse milkshake or something stronger.
Here’s mud in your eye. And everywhere else, too. After all, it’s the Memorial.
Sports columnist Rob Oller can be reached at roller@dispatch.com and on X.com at@rollerCD. Read his columns from theBuckeyes’ national championship season in “Scarlet Reign,” a hardcover coffee-table collector’s book from The Dispatch. Details at OhioState.Champs.com
