Muirfield Village Key Fantasy Stats

Memorial Tournament

June 3rd – 6th, 2021

Muirfield Village G.C.

Dubin, OH

Par: 72 / Yardage: 7,543

Purse: $9.3 million

with $1,674,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Jon Rahm

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

So the news for this week is the changes that they will see. For the 120 participates, they will see a totally different Muirfield Village. While Jon Rahm was winning last year’s Memorial, workers were stripping the grass off the 6th green on the other side of the course. Tournament host Jack Nicklaus had wanted to revamp the course for several years and finally did it after last year’s event. So all 18 greens were completely torn out and reconstructed with new bentgrass, irrigation, and an air system that could suck all of the moisture off the greens. He re contoured and re bunkered 14 of the 18 greens, rebuilding 12, 13, 14, and 17 to the way they use to be. On the other greens, he did significant remolding on all the bunkers. He alternated 16 of the 18 holes, he felt that 12 and 14 were perfect, so he left them the same. He added new tees to five of the holes, and all fairways were redone, with fairway bunkers being strategically repositioned. Muirfield Village will play 87 yards longer than it was for the 2020 Memorial with all of the work.
On the surface, many will think that Nicklaus has toughened up the course, alternating it to make it harder to score on. But that wasn’t Jack’s plan. Nicklaus wanted to make his pride and joy, his favorite course, be as perfect as possible. At age 81 he realizes that there won’t be many chances in the future to do a major redo, so that’s why they decided to make the changes. I haven’t seen the changes but from everything I’ve heard, he may have made a lot of changes, but they are all cosmetic in nature. It’s as if 40 years after the Mona Lisa was completed, Leonardo da Vinci decided to make some “improvements” to that perfect picture.
The course is always “perfect,” and in Jack Nicklaus’s mind, he has made Muirfield Village as good as possible.

It will be hard to compare this year with last year. For the week the scoring average was 74.01 and it was the 2nd toughest average for the year But the weather was terrible over the weekend, with lots of wind. In 2019 the scoring average was 72.08 and it was the 13th hardest course for the year. Bet that is what Nicklaus is looking for this year, again Jack didn’t make these changes to make the course harder, just more enjoyable to play. One thing that the tournament will be able to control is the moisture in the fairways and greens. With the sub-pumps under the course, they will be able to make the course firmer in wet conditions. But of course, we have seen a lot of rain and storms in the years the Memorial has been played so of course expect rain and Thunderstorms on Thursday and then the weather will get better with perfect conditions over the weekend.  The good news for the players, winds will be below 10 mph each day.

In looking at our four categories and taking into account that the grass may not be 10% perfect with all of the alterations, our first for Muirfield Village is and 6th in Driving Accuracy. On Greens in Regulation, the course was 5th. Last year’s winner Jon Rahm was 3rd in Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green.. Last year the course ranked 16th of all the courses in 2020 in Driving Distance and 6th in Driving Accuracy. On Greens in Regulation, the course was 5th. Last year’s winner Jon Rahm was 1st in Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green. 2019 champion Patrick Cantlay ranked 2nd, 2018 champion Bryson DeChambeau ranked 12th, 2017 champion Jason Dufner ranked 1st, 2016 winner William McGirt ranked 7th, and 2015 champion David Lingmerth ranked 9th.
The next important stat is Putting Inside 10 feet, Muirfield Village has some great greens, they are only 5,000 square feet but have a lot of undulation, and the bentgrass is easy to read. Still, with the greens running at 12 on the stipmeter if you make a lot of putts in this distance, you will do very well. Last year the course ranked 13th in this category while Jon Rahm was 11th making 65 of 71 putts. 2019 winner Patrick Cantlay was 19th making 64 of 71 putts. You have to putt well to score well at Muirfield Village, last year the field made 87.57% of the putts in that distance, so look for players that make lots of putts.
Our third important stat is scrambling, players will miss greens and have to get it up and down. The course ranked 1st last year, 7th in 2019, 11th in 2018, 2nd in 2017, 14th in 2016, and 13th in 2015 while Rahm ranked T-3rd last year. In 2019 Cantlay ranked 5th, DeChambeau ranked 1st in 2018, Dufner in 2017 was 30th, McGirt was 6th in 2016 and Lingmerth was T-9th.
Our last category is birdie average, last year it ranked 5th, in 2019 it was T-28th. In 2018 it ranked 42nd, in 2017 it ranked 29th, in 2016 it ranked 48th and in 2015 was 43rd which means a lot of birdies were made with the average number of birdies by players being 2.99 average last year and 3.77 in 2019. For the year 2018, it was 4.02, in 2017 it was 3.61, and 4.24 per round in 2016. So how did our winners do, Rahm made 18 birdies, and that ranked T-3rd. In 2019 Cantlay made 25 birdies, in 2018 DeChambeau was T-7th, Dufner was T-2nd in 2017, averaging 5.25, McGirt was at 5.00 which ranked T-16th and Lingmerth averaged 5.50 and ranked T-6th.
The big question, will the course play the same this year, especially with all of the changes and weather?

*Strokes Gained tee-to-green: The per round average of the number of strokes the player was better or worse than the field average on the same course & event minus the players’ strokes gained putting value.

*Putting inside 10 feet: Very easy, counts every putt from ten feet in to see who makes the most.

*Scrambling: The percent of time a player misses the green in regulation, but still makes par or better.

*Birdie Average: It’s the average number of birdies made over the course of a round.

The 110 of the 121 players from this year’s field with stats from 2021:

Click any column title in the table header to sort columns.