Golfing News & Blog Articles
Memorial To Feature Strongest Non-Major Field On Record Even With Some Dead Weight
🚨Stat of the week:
The 2020 @MemorialGolf SoF is set to break many #OWGR era records. As it looks now, this will be:
- strongest regular @PGATOUR event ever
- 1st regular PGA Tour event with SoF > 800
- stronger than any Playoff event ever
- stronger than the last 8 Masters pic.twitter.com/btBDoZrPsX
With the world’s top nine players and Tiger Woods turning up in Dublin, Ohio for the rescheduled Memorial Tournament, the strength of the 133-player field appears set to be historic (see above embed).
That said, as a few pointed out on Twitter today (below), the field features several sponsor invites of former champions from long ago who haven’t shown signs of relevance in a some time. Namely, Carl Pettersson and Vijay Singh.
Singh, 57, has yet to make a cut in 2020 in seven starts, has on top ten the last four years on the PGA Tour, and has made just 12 cuts in 42 starts during that time.
Petterson, 42, has made one PGA Tour start the last two years and since 2016, has made eleven made cuts in 60 starts with three WD’s and one top-25.
Clearly as past champions they received invites, Singh having won in 1997 and Pettersson in 2006.
There is also the curious choice of recent BYU senior Peter Kuest for an invite. He is the 2020 Memorial field instead of this year’s Jack Nicklaus Award winner, Pepperdine’s Sahith Theegala. The move is particularly odd since the current Nicklaus Award winner typically is attends tournament Sunday because he’s unable to play due to conflicting dates with NCAA golf.
Among the sponsor invites for this week’s Memorial: Carl Pettersson, Stewart Cink, K.J. Choi and Steve Stricker.
Not among them: Sahith Theegala... you know, the Nicklaus Award winner and top-ranked player in college golf last season. Swept all three POY honors.
When you find out Ryan Armour didn’t get a sponsor exemption for Memorial while Els, Singh, Stricker, Hot Carl/Charl, KJ, Cink, Kuest Diagnostics, Haas and Rodgers all did. https://t.co/b2SouD5Kzy pic.twitter.com/grSVsVPbLd
— Tron Carter (@TronCarterNLU) July 10, 2020For those hoping to see Tiger Woods referree a wrestling match between Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau the first two rounds, the ole Featured Groups role of the dice didn’t deliver:
This week's Featured Groups @MemorialGolf:
Tiger Woods
Rory McIlroy
Brooks Koepka
Phil Mickelson
Justin Rose
Shane Lowry
Bryson DeChambeau
Collin Morikawa
Patrick Cantlay
Dustin Johnson
Justin Thomas
Xander Schauffele pic.twitter.com/QGtI55WsSj
