PGA Tour to take place at Jack Nicklaus’s course for two straight weekends in July

Jack Nicklaus (Joe Dye, Wikimedia Commons)

According to the Associated Press on Tuesday, the PGA Tour will hold tournaments at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio for two consecutive weekends in July. The PGA Tour needed to juggle its scheduling after it was announced that the 2020 John Deere Classic in Silvis, Illinois would be cancelled because of coronavirus.

Instead of players travelling from one course to another during this time, the PGA Tour made the interesting decision to hold two consecutive tournaments on the same course. The hope is by having players play golf at one location for a span of two weeks, it will cut back on travel and reduce the chances of players getting coronavirus.

It has also been reported that Workday, which is a major sponsor for American golfing superstar Phil Mickelson, will be the main sponsor for the tournament, which is scheduled to go from July 9-12, 2020. The PGA Tour has also confirmed that the Workday tournament will be a one-year tournament only.

The Memorial Tournament is scheduled to take place from July 16-19 in Muirfield Village. These are new dates for the Memorial in 2020, as this PGA event normally takes place in late May or early June.

The Muirfield Village Golf Course is known throughout the golf world as a course that Jack Nicklaus designed. The course was designed in 1976 in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Nicklaus’s birthplace of Columbus, Ohio. At this time there will be no spectators for the event from July 9-12, with the possibility of limited spectators for the Memorial.

The Memorial Tournament was first part of the PGA Tour in 1976, and its first champion was Roger Maltbie. If Roger Maltbie sounds familiar to golf fans today, he should, as he has been an on-course golf analyst for NBC Sports since 1991. Nicklaus meanwhile won the Memorial Tournament in 1977 and 1984. Tiger Woods has won the Memorial Tournament a record five times (1999, 2000, 2001, 2009, 2012). Patrick Cantlay of Long Beach, California is the defending champion.

As for the John Deere Classic, the event first took place under its current name in 1999. It was previously known as the Quad Cities Open, the Ed McMahon-Jaycees Quad Cities Open, the Miller High Life Quad Cities Open, the Lite Quad Cities Open, the Hardee’s Golf Classic, and the Quad City Classic. Steve Stricker of Edgerton, Wisconsin has won the John Deere Classic the most times as he has three titles (2009, 2010 and 2011). Meanwhile, the defending champion is Dylan Frittelli of South Africa.

There are currently 36, 826 cases of coronavirus in Ohio and 2309 deaths. In Illinois, where the John Deere Classic is moving from, there are 123, 830 cases, and 5621 deaths.