Jack Nicklaus wasn’t necessarily happy doing the PGA Tour a favor.
The 18-time major champion and winner of 73 PGA Tour titles agreed to go along with a new plan that would move his annual Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio a week later — and right before the US Open — to help with the PGA Tour’s signature event series.
“We would prefer the other week,” Nicklaus said Tuesday at a news conference, per Sports Illustrated. “However, we are here this week because the Tour asked us to help them out. They said they had a thing they wanted to do and that the players had asked for and that would we help it out, and we said yes, that we would do that this week.
“But we said we would review it after this tournament and we’ll figure out how we’re going to settle the schedule after that, and I said that discussion is under way.”
The tournament, which is in its 49th year and will run from June 6-9, has been traditionally played two weeks prior to the US Open and the week after Memorial Day.
Nicklaus mentioned the tournament has also been tied to the holiday in the past.
“Yesterday, was normally a very big day gallery-wise for us because it was Memorial Day, and we had maybe a thousand people here yesterday,” he said. “From the sponsor’s standpoint, I think that they get into board meetings and kids’ graduations and so forth, so that’s maybe not as advantageous.
“But that won’t make any difference. We’re going to have a good tournament this week either way, in spite of all the different things. And as I say, we did that as a favor and the Tour asked us to do that, and we said yes. So we’ve always been a supporter of the Tour. We want to try to continue to support what is best for the Tour, but we also want to support what’s best for the Memorial Tournament. So that is to be determined.”
The new schedule idea was created to prevent regular tournaments from being stuck between two signature events or any majors.
In 2023, the Memorial was played before the RBC Canadian Open. This year, the tournaments switched spots on the calendar with Robert MacIntyre winning in Toronto last week.
“The Golden Bear” didn’t take to this, advocating for the same rest between major tournaments that he once had.
“Let’s put it this way. When I played, I would rarely play a week before any major championship,” Nicklaus said. “So I’m asked to be part of putting on a golf tournament in a week that I would never play. That, to me, is the essential part from my standpoint.”
Nicklaus’ tournament is one of the eight signature events of the PGA Tour this year with reduced playing fields and purses reaching $20 million — with the winner getting $4 million.
The tournament was first played in 1976 at the Muirfield Village Golf Club.
