Tag: Memorial

Workday will replace Nationwide as presenting sponsor of the Memorial Tournament in 2022

Workday signed a 10-year deal to replace Nationwide Insurance, which has sponsored the Memorial since 2011.

Workday is returning to Muirfield Village Golf Club, not in a setup role this time but as presenting sponsor of the Memorial Tournament in 2022.

Workday, a software vendor concentrating on financial management and human resources, signed a 10-year deal to replace Nationwide Insurance, which has sponsored the Memorial since 2011. The new sponsorship begins after the 2021 tournament, which is scheduled to run June 3-6.

In July, Workday stepped in at the last minute to sponsor the Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village. The tournament, won by Collin Morikawa in a playoff against Justin Thomas, was a one-off PGA Tour event held the week before the Memorial that filled a hole in the calendar created when the Illinois-based John Deere Classic was canceled due to COVID-19.

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Joining with Workday means the Memorial, which already counts Nationwide Children’s Hospital as a charitable beneficiary, will add Eat. Learn. Play., an Oakland, California-based foundation supported by NBA star Stephen Curry and his wife, Ayesha.

Rob Oller is a columnist for the Columbus Dispatch. Email him at roller@dispatch.com, and follow him on Twitter at @rollerCD.

Is Bryson DeChambeau the next John Daly? In a few ways, perhaps

John Daly burst onto the scene with his “grip it and rip it” style of golf. Bryson DeChambeau is more “analyze it and rip it.”

DUBLIN, Ohio – Bryson DeChambeau would be John Daly if he had majored in barefoot beer-swilling instead of physics. If he knew nothing instead of trying to know everything. If Hooters was his favorite hangout spot. And if he smoked Marlboros instead of Bridgestones.

Other than those tiny differences – ahem – the two blonde bombers are pretty much alike. At least off the tee, where their calling card is/was being able to hit a golf ball the length of three football fields.

Or four. During the opening round of the Memorial Tournament on Thursday, DeChambeau powdered his 5.5-degree Cobra King Speedzone driver (Branding!) a mesmerizing 423 yards on the par-4 first hole at Muirfield Village.

He had 46 yards left to the pin. You can pick your jaw off the floor now.

“I sometimes can’t believe it. There were years where I hit 5-iron into that hole, and now I’m hitting a 30-yard little shot,” he said after shooting a 1-over-par 73.

At hole 17, DeChambeau smacked his drive, watched it climb toward the jet stream and ordered his Bridgestone Tour BX golf ball — Branding! — to “Sit down” for fear it might end up in the creek 437 yards away. It came to rest 30 yards short.

DeChambeau’s straight-armed Moe Norman-ish golf swing is a sight to behold, if your eyesight is strong enough to track 350-yard drives.

Just as challenging is tracking DeChambeau as he describes air density, body mass – the 26-year-old has added 30 pounds over the past six months to weigh in at 240, still 40 pounds short of Daly as his heftiest – and his 200-mph ball speed that would win the Indy 500. But there are enough times — here again is where he and Daly become one — when the No. 7-ranked player in the world speaks plainly and honestly.

“I would say as time went on, I just realized that I’ve really got nothing to lose, and what if I could hit it just as far as the longest players out here but hit it straighter,” DeChambeau said, explaining his reasoning for switching full-time to the go-for-broke swing he calls “The Kraken.”

DeChambeau, despite having five PGA Tour wins entering 2020, also became bored with playing it safe.

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“I kind of get tired of playing the same game over and over again,” he said. “My game that I was playing, I wanted to just spice things up a little bit and see if I could make an impact.”

He has. In his own way, DeChambeau is trying to change golf like Daly did nearly two decades ago, when Big John burst onto the scene by winning the 1991 PGA Championship with his “grip it and rip it” style of golf. DeChambeau is more “analyze it and rip it,” but the concept is similar: hit your first shot as far as you can so your next shot with a shorter iron becomes easier.

Not everyone agrees with the approach, or the player who is promoting it. There is murmuring on tour – or tweeting, in the case of Brooks Koepka, who enjoys ribbing DeChambeau on social media – that the Kraken is overrated.

Dustin Johnson addressed whether he might follow DeChambeau’s lead and go all-in off the tee.

“Until I feel like I need to hit it further to compete or beat these guys, then that’s what I’ll do,” Johnson said. “But for right now I feel like if I’m playing my game, he can hit it as far as he wants to, and I don’t think he’s going to beat me.”

Alrighty then. Except DeChambeau is beating people. His shtick with a stick has resulted in seven consecutive top-10 finishes, including a win two weeks ago at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, when he averaged 351 yards off the two measured driving holes.

Jealousy is afoot, no doubt, as is a purist view that bomb-it-then-bunt-it is hurting golf. Bah. DeChambeau is good for the game, as Daly was. True, the latter is much more of a character, while the former is more about marketing his character (creating and protecting his brand is big with Bryson), but neither are cardboard cutouts. Thank goodness.

DeChambeau may not be your cup of tea, but at least he’s not lukewarm water.

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Golf with fans? Organizers from the Memorial and others are pressing for it

Representatives from four professional tournaments in Ohio are asking the state’s governor to open these events to spectators.

The Memorial Tournament and three other professional golf events in Ohio have gone on the offensive by requesting that Gov. Mike DeWine lift or ease a ban on large gatherings and allow fans to attend their summer tournaments.

A letter addressed to DeWine and co-signed by the tournament directors of the Memorial, Marathon Classic in Toledo, Bridgestone Senior PGA Challenge in Akron and Nationwide Children’s Championship reads: “We appeal to you to permit the four Ohio professional tournaments to allow fans this coming July and August.”

DeWine’s order limiting gatherings to 10 or fewer people was put in place March 12 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The letter, dated May 15, includes proposals on how the tournaments will implement safety measures to protect spectators, including social distancing, issuing protective equipment (masks, sanitizers, gloves and screening) and temperature screening outside tournament grounds.

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The tournament directors insist that “without fans these tournaments will not be successful or viable.”

Memorial Tournament director Dan Sullivan chose not to release details specific to his event, including whether fans at Muirfield Village Golf Club would be required to wear masks.

“We are working on a plan and details to follow,” Sullivan said. But he confirmed that the Memorial will go forward July 16-19 with or without fans.

The same cannot be said of the LPGA’s Marathon Classic, held July 23-26 in Sylvania.

“If the question is, ‘Could you play the tournament without spectators?’ we couldn’t,” Marathon tournament director Judd Silverman said. “When you run the numbers, if (there are) no spectators, then you’re returning all of the sponsorship money … and once you return all that money, it puts our event deep into the red to the point we can’t afford to do that.”

Silverman stressed the community bonding aspect of fans being able to attend tournaments, and the letter attempts to drive that point home.

“We also wish to communicate that while each of our events has a different business model, we all rely on sponsors and fans as critical elements to our success,” the letter reads. “The positive impact the tournaments deliver to the State, our host communities and the many charities which benefit is a direct result of the support we receive from hosting sponsors and fans at our events.”

But in-person attendance goes beyond altruistic giving; it also is about getting sports back to normal, which includes fans attending events that give off energy.

Professional golf returned to live broadcast on Sunday with the TaylorMade Driving Relief charity skins event that featured Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson against Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff at Seminole Golf Club in Florida.

One might list golf among the few sports in which not having fans on-site makes little difference, with the game’s polite applause and only occasional crowd roars. But the made-for-TV skins game revealed that even golf needs its galleries. Watching the four players stroll Seminole in shorts while carrying their own golf bags, and with barely any banter to increase interest, turned the event into somewhat of a sterile snoozer. (There was, however, more than $5 million raised for COVID-19 relief.)

Golf followers are about to find out how an actual PGA Tour event held without fans looks and sounds or does not sound when the Charles Schwab Challenge tees off June 11 in Forth Worth, Texas. How will the watching experience register without galleries?

The Ohio tournament directors hope they don’t have to find out for themselves.

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Silverman said the four events hope to hear back from DeWine’s office in the next two weeks, but the governor’s office did not confirm a timetable.

“We did get a letter. It’s something our teams have been working on,” DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney said. “Our large venue group and tourism group are well into work on it. I can’t say how soon we will have an announcement.”

The letter urges DeWine to consider the distinctive nature of golf tournaments: “We are hopeful you recognize the unique attributes professional golf tournaments offer relative to hosting fans in an expansive outdoor environment.”

The Bridgestone Senior Players Championship (Aug. 13-16) and Korn Ferry Tour’s Nationwide Children’s Championship, played Aug. 20-23 at the Ohio State Scarlet Course, have more time to work with. But the Memorial needs to know about fan admittance by June 1 and the Sylvania tournament by June 20, Silverman said.

“We’re all committed to move forward with the governor and have reduced numbers of attendees relative to a traditional year,” he said.

Just so that number is not zero.

Rob Oller is a columnist for the Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA Today Network. Contact him at roller@dispatch.com and follow him on Twitter at @rollerCD

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Jack Nicklaus: Memorial ‘probably’ moving to July

Jack Nicklaus said that the Memorial is probably slated to move from its June 1-4 spot on the PGA Tour schedule to July 16-19.

Memorial Tournament founder and host Jack Nicklaus said on Friday that the tournament is probably slated to move from its June 1-4 spot on the PGA Tour schedule to July 16-19.

“I don’t think they’ve announced it yet; they’re looking probably at the British Open week,” Nicklaus said on the CBS Sports First Cut podcast. “The British Open canceled and they could move us back into that.”

Nicklaus quickly added that nothing is certain until if and when the Memorial is officially postponed from its current spot on the tour calendar.

“Of course right now the Memorial Tournament is still on in its regular date,” Nicklaus said. “Whether we’ll be ready in the first of June, I seriously doubt it. Whether we’ll be ready in the middle of July, I don’t know. But we certainly hope.”

The Tour has canceled events up to the Colonial on May 21-24. An updated late May and June schedule has yet to be released as the tour works through issues related to the coronavirus pandemic.