One of the key changes to the PGA Tour’s 2024 schedule is moving the Memorial Tournament back a week to allow top players to play at Muirfield Village and then travel from there directly to Pinehurst No. 2 for the U.S. Open.
That means this year’s national championships will begin and end with the two signature events, with the Travelers Championship scheduled for the following week in Connecticut.
Some golf fans have welcomed the change, as it means the PGA Tour’s biggest stars will be playing three consecutive weeks.
But some, including Jack Nicklaus, who hosts the annual celebration, aren’t.
“When I was playing, I rarely played the week before a major, so I get asked to help run golf tournaments the week I’m not playing,” Nicklaus said.
“To me, that’s the most important part.”
Before signature events were created with inflated prize money and reduced field sizes to counter the rise of live golf, the weeks before a major tournament were often a quiet field where the best players could practice and get in shape.
But now the Tour has turned those weeks into pivotal tournaments, as evidenced by last month’s Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, one week before the PGA Championship at Valhalla.
The Genesis Scottish Open will serve a similar purpose ahead of the British Open in July. Though not a signature event, the Scottish Open is co-sponsored by the DP World Tour and features the top players from the United States and Europe.
But holding the Scottish Open just before the British Open makes sense for a number of reasons, starting with logistics.
Nicklaus, meanwhile, would like his tournament to return to its traditional spot on the calendar: the first weekend in June, which would also coincide with the first practice round of the week with Memorial Day, the last Monday in May.
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“From a sponsor’s standpoint, Memorial Day is in our name and we were around around Memorial Day,” Nicklaus said.
“[Monday] Today was Memorial Day, which is usually a big day for the gallery, but we had about 1,000 people come yesterday.”
Nicklaus later said he agreed to the schedule change as a favor to the PGA Tour.
“Despite everything that’s happened, this week is going to be a good tournament either way,” Nicklaus added.
“We did it as a favor. The Tour asked us to do it and we said yes. So we’ve always been supporters of the Tour. We want to continue to support what’s best for the Tour, but we also want to support what’s best for the Memorial Tournament. So [the future] A decision is to be made.”
The PGA Tour schedule for 2025 has yet to be announced. If it follows last year’s example, the tour will likely make the announcement during the FedEx Cup playoffs in August.
Regardless of when it is announced, the first thing fans will be wondering is when the Memorial Tournament will be held in 2025. Presumably it will return when Nicklaus wants it to, but given how important these signature events have become, the Memorial will probably remain the way it is – played ahead of the U.S. Open – which would be a shame for the Golden Bear.
Jack Mirko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation Playing Through. Follow For more golf articles, follow us on Twitter Jack Mirko In the same way.
