Awesome finish to 50th anniversary of Memorial Tournament
COVER PHOTO: J.T. Poston celebrates his first-ever Memorial Tournament win after a two-hole playoff. Picture by Angie Greenwood/Columbus Wired.
Chaos ensued for the final round of the 51st annual Memorial Tournament as five guys exchanged the lead for the final nine holes. And why shouldn’t it have been any less for the event that Jack Nicklaus created 50 years ago?!
When all was said and done, it once again took a playoff to decide who was the winner of Jack’s event, full of dashed hopes and discovered dreams.
And the discoverer of those dreams was first-time winner J.T. Poston, who bested Ryan Gerard in a two-hole playoff to take home his first Memorial trophy.
Of course, this year’s tourney wasn’t without the usual “Curse of Chief Leatherlips” as play was suspended twice on Saturday because of lightning, including a complete stoppage of play after 4:30 p.m. when a monsoon erupted that included dime-sized hail and knocked over one of CBS’ TV towers near the 10th green.
Luckily no one was hurt but reminded everyone what Chief Leatherlips can be capable of, including softening up the course.
“It definitely is softer, I would say it's playing longer,” Poston said after the finish of his third round. “You're hitting some longer clubs into the greens, maybe (and) the rough is certainly tough. It was before the rain, but with it wet, it's really tough. So you've got to hit the fairway, but if you hit the fairways, it's a little softer on the greens, so you can be aggressive and we were able to kind of pick our spots.”
With the rain stoppage on Saturday, that meant guys would have to pick up their round on Sunday where they left off from Saturday, and for Poston, that meant he’d have to start with his putt on No. 6 and play a whopping 31 holes from there on out.
“The goal was just to shoot a solid round in the third round, and being even through five holes and having a 5-, 6-footer to start the day for par, the goal was to make that putt and try and get some momentum to start the day” he said before the start of his final round. “So I feel like we did exactly that. I mean, 3-under is a good score around here any day, I feel like. So certainly, we will take that and the goal for the rest of the afternoon is to do the exact same.”
As simple as it sounds, Poston cruised through the front nine with a three-stroke lead even though he shot two bogeys with one birdie. But guys like Gerard, Wyndham Clark, Tommy Fleetwood and Sam Burns wouldn’t go away.
“I went through a stretch where I felt like I was hitting it great, holed a good putt on 14 for par, then eagle 15,” Fleetwood said.
However, he bogeyed par-4, No. 17 that took him out of it.
But still in the mix was Gerard, who iced a 36-foot putt on No. 17 for a birdie and put him in the lead at -12. Even then, he didn’t think he had it wrapped up.
“No, no, that never even crossed my mind,” he said. “I knew where I stood on the leaderboard. I didn't think I had won the golf tournament. That was just a really big putt in the moment and the emotion that kind of came out was like a day of grinding really, really hard and not really seeing anything long go in, and then that was kind of the one that kind of got the lid off the hole.”
The final hole, though, would be the predictor of whether or not it would go into extras.
Gerard was up by a stroke at -12 and Poston was sitting at -11.
Then fate struck as Poston stuck his second shot from the fairway to within eight feet of the hole while Gerard’s second shot landed 39 feet to the hole.
Gerard raced his putt five feet past the hole, setting him up for a 5-foot-plus par putt, while Poston calmly stepped up and drained his 8-footer for a birdie and Gerard made the par putt to take it into extras.
From there, Poston was able to set himself up with a second shot from the fairway and what seemed to be a tourney-ending putt from less than nine feet away while Gerard’s second shot landed over 37 feet away and looked like a pipe-dream from becoming a reality to win Jack’s tournament.
However, Poston pushed his putt two-and-a-half feet to the right while Gerard put his 38-footer to within five inches of the hole and the two would tap in their par putts on the playoff hole to take it into a second playoff hole.
Both would shank their tee shots into the rough, with Poston going to the right between the fairway bunkers and Gerard going left close to the creek. But Poston would put his second shot within 29 feet of the hole. Gerard had to shape his shot around trees just to get within 54 feet of the hole, which landed closer than that but rolled back several feet and came to a rest in nearly the same spot it did the hole before.
Poston’s birdie putt came up shy by less than four feet while Gerard’s settled less than six feet to the hole. All Gerard had to do was sink his putt and hope that Poston would miss to take it into a third playoff hole.
However, Gerard pushed his par putt to the right by two-and-a-half feet. Poston would then knock in his three-and-a-half footer for par and ultimately the win.
Gerard said his first putt on the second playoff hole was different than the first putt on the first playoff hole, even though they were virtually from the same spot.
“Yeah, it was a little different. It was probably a couple feet further to the -- or it was probably a foot further and a foot lower. So I had a similar read on it, and I don't know if I just didn't hit it hard enough or it just snapped a little bit more than I thought or maybe some combination of both. But I felt like I made a decent stroke. It just didn't give it enough speed in that moment. Yeah, it wasn't a bad putt, I just didn't hit it high enough or hard enough.”
Before the event went into extras, Poston knew things would go his way.
“I told Aaron, my caddie, when we were walking off the tee, we've had a few scenarios this year. Now, granted several of them were to make the cut on Friday, but we had to birdie the last hole. And it's a similar type of pressure. You've got nothing to lose and just step up there and hit the shot. And I told him, We've birdied 18 a few times this year. Let's go do it again. So to be able to pull it off at a tournament like this and on a hole like 18 at Muirfield Village is incredible.”
The payday isn’t terrible, either way. Poston walks away with a $4 million check while Gerard collects a cool $2.2 million for finishing in second.
Notable finishes
Wyndham Clark: had his best finish in seven straight Memorial tournaments in third place taking home a $1.4 million payday.
Tommy Fleetwood and Sam Burns: Both finished tied for 4th and will have an $825,000 check made out to them.
Five-way tie for 12th place: it may not seem like a storyline but the fact that the following five will each take home over $400k is saying something considering the way the 50th anniversary of Jack’s tournament went:
J.J. Spaun (2025 U.S. Open winner); Adam Scott (2013 Masters); Justin Rose (2010 Memorial, 2013 U.S. Open); Rory McIlroy (6th-ever Grand Slam winner - no Memorial wins); Scottie Scheffler (back-to-back Memorial winner, and 4-time Major winner).