World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler didn’t bring his A game to Colonial last week, more like B-minus, yet it was still good enough for a share of fourth place behind 40/1 breakthrough winner Ben Griffin. It’s a different scenario at Jack’s Place, Muirfield Village, this week as he goes there as defending champion.
It’s a considerably tougher field at Memorial than the one he failed to conquer in his home state last week but there’s no Rory McIlroy again – he comes back for the Canadian Open – his US Open warm-up – and that makes Scottie an incredibly short price to see off 71 rivals at Nicklaus’s first, and arguably best, creation Muirfield Village, close to his Columbus, Ohio roots at Dublin.
The name of the course is a homage to the great Scottish links where the Golden Bear won the first of his three Open Championships in 1966. To put McIlroy’s recent career Grand Slam achievement into context: Nicklaus did it THREE times over with his six Masters, five PGAS, four US Opens and three Opens – 18 Majors to Rory’s five (but counting). We shall never see his like again.
Muirfield Village’s place in our hearts was assured when the 1987 Ryder Cup was the scene of Europe’s first win away from home with Nicklaus captaining the losing side. It is a course Nicklaus has persistently tweaked since he put it on the golfing map and his “baby” is now a bouncing 49-year-old, a par 72 measuring a hefty 7569 yards, a track that yields birdies grudgingly – the last two winners were only eight and seven under par – yet one of the most popular tour stops, probably because it gives everyone, long or short, a chance.
It is one of only three Signature events to have a cut, so not everyone gets paid. Those that do will be sharing a pot of $20m. Scheffler is Fitzdares’ 11/4 favourite to walk off with the lion’s share of that, a cool $4m, though Scottie is as rich as Croesus and will be far more concerned with cutting out last week’s errors and winning for the third time this year. It will take a good one to stop him as he’s been first, second and third in three of the last four years (did not play in 2022).
The main dangers could be Si Woo Kim, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay and Viktor Hovland.
Si Woo, fourth here in 2023 and eighth in 2021, has looked impressive in recent battles – eighth at the PGA and Heritage plus top-20s at the CJ Cup and the Truist. Not quite so good at Colonial last week, but the whole profile suggests he is close to the top of his game. But his putter, often the weakest club in the bag, needs a “going” week if he is to menace Scheffler.
It’s been a long time since Cantlay won, but he was fabulously consistent until missing the cut at the PGA last time out. Fourth at the Truist and 13th at Heritage before that setback, as a dual Memorial champion in 2019-21 he’s hard to leave out.
Morikawa fought a playoff with Cantlay in 2021 and was runner-up again last year, just a shot behind the mighty Scheffler. Like Cantlay he’s a long-time non-winner and like Si Woo he needs his putter to behave. Significantly, Memorial was the closest he got last year.
Hovland has the advantage over the other three as he is a winner this year, right out of the blue at Valspar after 18 months in the doldrums as he unsuccessfully tried to implement a swing change that was supposed to cut out a destructive shot. He is not 100% reliable yet but is getting there and if he ever needed inspiration, fellow Norwegian Kristoffer Reitan’s breakthrough in Belgium on the DP World Tour could not have been timelier.
Hideki Matsuyama, who scored his first victory on US soil at Muirfield Village 11 years ago, and Justin Thomas also must come into the conversation as must Ludvig Aberg, Matt Fitzpatrick and recent winner Sepp Straka who all shared fifth place last year. A cloudy but dry week is forecast.
After four years in the golfing wilderness, the Austrian Open returns to the DP World Tour fold at Gut Altentann, a stunning Jack Nicklaus layout just outside Salzburg, and with 150/1 outsider Kristoffer Reitan stealing the honours in Belgium on Sunday the big question is: Whose turn is it this week?
It’s a wide-open contest in a country that produces few world-class golfers. At the moment they have one, Sepp Straka, and he’ll be heavily involved in the far-more-lucrative Memorial tournament in Ohio. That leaves Bernd Wiesberger, once a prolific winner and Ryder Cup player but these days a very run-of-the-mill operator still searching for his first top-ten of the year, as Austria’s chief flag-bearer.
Wiesberger is one of those who were tempted by LIV’s riches beyond compare but after two fruitless seasons, this eight-time winner has rejoined DP World Tour. There have been only rare examples of the old Bernd, mainly because of poor putting, but his two latest efforts, an 11th at the Hainan Classic and 25th at the Soudal Open, were more encouraging. Home support could inspire him to raise his game.
This is the first Austrian Open since 2021 when John Catlin beat Marcus Kinhult in a playoff at the Diamond club at Atzenbrugg but you have to go back to 1992 to find the last DP World Tour winner at Gut Altentann. The course hosted three consecutive Opens, won by Bernhard Langer, Mark Davis and Peter Mitchell, with Langer the first winner there in 1990 when the great German defeated Lanny Wadkins in a playoff. At 6941 yards it is short for a par 70.
Fresh from his breakthrough in Antwerp, lanky Norwegian Reitan goes again after a remarkable playoff victory. He finished his spectacular final round of 62 three hours before the overnight leader Ewen Ferguson came down the 72nd hole needing just a par four to win, an assignment that proved beyond him. Reitan’s birdie ended the subsequent playoff with Ferguson and Dutchman Darius Van Driel.
It will take time for Ferguson to get over the disappointment while another not up to the task was weak finisher Jordan Smith who was yet again in contention. Runner-up in China, seventh in Turkey and fourth in Belgium, he’s one of the favourites and will probably challenge again but punters must be despairing of ever collecting on this classy Englishman.
Bearing fewer scars is young Dane Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, a runner-up on both main tours this year, in Qatar and Puerto Rico, and fourth at the Hainan Classic before missing the cut at the USPGA. A triple winner on the satellite tour last year, he is a golfer of enormous potential and seeing contemporaries Reitan and Martin Couvra do the business so early in their careers will get his competitive juices flowing.
I seem to be putting Haotong Li up a lot but daren’t leave him out after Sunday’s T4 at the Soudal where he hit more fairways than usual. Nicklaus courses are pretty generous off the tee so give Haotong one more chance. He’s already won this year, in Qatar, and been top-four on his two latest outings.
Sharing that T4 slot with Li and Smith on Sunday was American journeyman Troy Merritt, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour back in the day but now off that scene and now plying his trade on the DP World Tour rather than go back to the second-tier Korn Ferry circuit. The 39-year-old was always a fine putter but lacks firepower. This should be his sort of course in what looks to be a rainy week, heaviest on Friday and quite breezy for the first round.
