On June 4, 125 professional golfers will tee off in the 40th Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, marking another milestone in the storied life and career of Jack Nicklaus and Muirfield Village Golf Club.
The man generally acclaimed as the best golfer ever, coupled with a tournament he started at the golf club he built, have brought national and worldwide recognition to Dublin – a farming community with fewer than 1,000 residents when Nicklaus arrived.
Related: Muirfield Mourns Passing of Former Memorial Tournament Director
It was appropriate that the first tournament – which started on May 27, 1976 – would end in a wild finish highlighted by an errant golf shot that ricocheted off a stake to essentially win the tournament for a lesser-known golfer in a playoff format that had not been tried on the PGA Tour.
At the end of 72 holes, Roger Maltbie, now a well-known NBC golf analyst, and Hale Irwin were tied at 288, even par, and tied the first two holes a three-hole playoff, starting on hole 15.
On the 17th, Maltbie hooked a 188-yard approach shot onto the spectator embankment left of the green. It hit an iron pole used for crowd control ropes and bounced onto the green, where he made par, matching Irwin. Playing 18 to break the tie in sudden death, Irwin hit behind a tree, bent a five-iron getting back in play and took four shots to reach the green on the par 4. Maltbie hit the green in regulation and made a 20-foot birdie to gain a win for the 1975 rookie of the year.
Shere Everett, a Dublin resident and volunteer worker on the status scoreboard, remembers Maltbie’s shot.
“It flew right by me,” she says. “I saw it bounce onto the green.”
Everett has volunteered five days of every tournament since, working various scoring venues and holding some chairmanships. She’s been on the status board only three days this year.
“But I may go out on Sunday and watch,” she says.
Once an avid golfer, Everett says she volunteered because the tournament benefited Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where her 4-year-old niece had spent 10 weeks recovering from extensive burns.
Nicklaus is well-known as a stickler for detail who keeps his eye on every aspect of the tournament and the course.
With an assist from course designers Pete Dye and Desmond Muirhead, who provided schematics, Nicklaus designed and built a challenging course that’s spectator friendly, a practice facility and a clubhouse on 240 of more than 1,580 acres he had acquired, the balance of which became a residential community.
The design remained a work in progress, even during construction.
Nicklaus had retained attorney Ben Hale Jr. and his late partner, Harrison W. Smith Jr., to handle all the legal work that eventually involved annexation of 3,960 acres of mostly farmland north of Post Road – at the time, the third largest ever in Franklin County – drafting a zoning code for the village of Dublin and reaching intricate agreements for Columbus to provide water and sewer service. The code was adopted in 1973. Muirfield Village was created. Hale doesn’t think it has been altered much, if at all, since.
Jack wanted to own the golf course and some residential acreage, and he partnered with the Ohio Company to develop the area he owned, Hale says.
“He was interested in making the golf course the best he could,” Hale says. “He wanted to have a great golf course, to have some separation from houses and to honor people.”
Hence, Memorial Day inspired both the tournament’s name and timing. Robert T. Jones, the legendary amateur golfer and a founder of Augusta National, home of the Masters Tournament was the first honoree recognized at a ceremony.
Nicklaus’ tournament drew 18 top money winners, five of whom later became honorees, enshrined with bronze plaques in the Memorial Garden just off the first tee and fairway. They were Raymond Floyd, who had to withdraw from the first tournament, Lee Trevino, Sam Snead, Tom Watson and Nicklaus.
Honorees are selected by the Captains Club, a group of two dozen national and international dignitaries – and some players – picked for their appreciation of and involvement in the sport.
The tournament’s popularity with pros is unabated. Most of the winners are a who’s who in golf. Most prominent is Tiger Woods, a five-time winner. Others include Kenny Perry, a three-time winner, Fred Couples, Greg Norman, Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk, Ernie Els, Paul Azinger and Nicklaus, twice victorious.
By and large, the first tournament went off without a hitch, owing to experience some officials gained staging one-day pro-am tournaments at the Columbus Country Club for 10 years and at Muirfield Village.
A large tent near the 18th green was the main concession stand, since replaced by the multi-purpose pavilion that also houses tournament offices, an expansive dining room and press facilities.
Sandwiches came from the “sandwich factory” manned by volunteers at nearby Riviera Country Club, whose members also were much involved with the tournament.
Like Everett, Joyce Williams of Perrysburg has volunteered for all 39 tournaments, drawn to help Children’s Hospital, where she had lost an infant daughter with a heart deformity that, at the time, could not be surgically repaired.
Her first three years, Williams sold souvenirs she carried on a large tray suspended from a strap around her neck. She eventually moved to the concessions and seldom sees golf now.
In those years, the approximately 1,000 volunteers (about 3,000 are used now) paid $5 to be included.
“That was a lot of money then. But it worked. You showed up for your shift,” Williams says.
They bought matching tournament-approved clothes. Initially, women wore polyester dresses. Now the clothing package allows khaki shorts, pants or skirts, and tournament-approved shirts.
A pro-am, a typical prelude for many Tour events, drew celebrities. Williams remembers seeing Bob Hope and former President Gerald Ford.
The first tournament had Hope; Bing Crosby, who withdrew because of illness; Jackie Gleason; Flip Wilson; then-Gov. James A. Rhodes (who played nine holes) and Miami Dolphins Coach Don Shula. Hope returned in later years, alongside such big-name guests as President George H.W. Bush and Sean Connery.
The for-fun event included 52 pros. For the tournament, 92 pros played for a purse of $200,000 with $40,000 going to the winner. By comparison, 125 pros this year will seek a share of $6.2 million in prize money and $1.1 million for the champion. Tickets were $5 for Monday’s practice, $10 each of the next three days and $12 each for Saturday and Sunday, all available to walk-up buyers. Tickets are $30 for three practice days and start at $165 for an all-tournament badge or daily tickets.
Practice rounds begin June 1, and the tournament starts June 4 this year. For complete information visit www.thememorialmournament.com.
Duane St. Clair is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at hbealer@cityscenecolumbus.com.
The Memorial tournament, Muirfield Village Golf Club and the massive housing development that became Muirfield Village were important cogs in Dublin’s maturation.
The sleepy farm community, population 681 in 1970, is now a thriving city with an estimated 44,375 residents, says Steve Langworthy, the City’s planning director.
“The Memorial Tournament has been a boon to the City of Dublin. As the direct result of one man’s vision, around 2,000 homes sprung up in Muirfield Village and many more in the surrounding area, creating the foundation for the city’s subsequent development of corporate office and research centers,” Langworthy says.
Margery Amorose, executive director of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, says residential development at Muirfield Village, fostered by Jack Nicklaus along with the golf course and tournament, provided much needed desirable housing for the influx of employees at large companies, such as Ashland Chemical, that were locating around I-270.
“(The tournament) opened our community to the world,” she says.
Business leaders “would come to see (the community) and say, ‘We ought to be here,’ resulting in a lot of development,” she says.
For early tournaments, Amorose and members of the fledging chamber manned shuttles between hotels in Columbus because there were none in Dublin. Many pros stayed in homes that were springing up around the course. Many new homes were also rented as business or corporate entertainment centers for tournament week.
Scott Dring, executive director of the Dublin Conventions and Visitors Bureau, says Dublin’s first hotel was built in 1981. Now there are 15 with about 2,000 rooms, most of which are booked for tournament week.
“The Memorial has really put Dublin on the map as a (desirable) destination,” he says.
“Much of our success as a community can be attributed to partnerships between the City and tournament officials from the very onset of the tournament, and those relationships remain strong,” Langworthy says.
