The Memorial at Jack's Place

There are few places that showcase golf to the level of Muirfield Village in Dublin Ohio.  Jack's Place hosts the PGA Tour's Memorial Golf Tournament every year and because Jack is my dad's absolute favorite, I had to take him so we could see that place for ourselves.  And it did NOT disappoint.

We entered the grounds midweek via hole 15 green entrance.  Military vets were free with an ID and my dad was 26 years in the US Air Force so he did not hesitate to whip out his credentials and get us on the course.  Immediately the undulation of the rolling terrain took me by surprise, then I saw the fairways.  Tight and fairly compact, the fairways were nuanced and a lot of tee shots were blind.  The greens was strategically angled with bunkers, water or OB surrounded every single one of them.  Both the fairways and the greens hardened severely throughout week of play and Oh, and it's LONG, almost 7600 yards long!

My dad hit his bucket list of shaking the hands of some of his childhood favorites; Ben Crenshaw and Jack Nicklaus.  Truly a special venue that showed us some truly special moments.  I saw David Lingmerth, who won at Memorial in 2015 and whom we had the great Sawgrass 17 moment.  The guy is so cool and to watch him play this giant course so well was really great, Ling made the cut!

Dad and I were out of there by the weekend but it absolutely belonged to Billy Horschel.  The man shot 65 on Saturday when par would've been great and he didn't take his foot off the gas until his final putt on 18 on Sunday.  He hit fairway after fairway and managed to give himself looks on Saturday that others just weren't getting and he was making the putts!  The entire week his putting pace was spot on and once he started dialing in the lines, he didn't really miss until Sunday.  Even when it looked like Aaron Wise was going to step one step closer to the lead, Billy hit a 52ft putt on 15 for eagle and that was that.  He stayed focused throughout his round but cracked a little once on the green with his kids yelling "daddy won" in the background.

What a moment.