Seven of golf’s top 10 in Memorial field

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As per the usual, Jack Nicklaus’s tournament typically pulls in a field worthy of a major. Hence why many, especially within the state of Ohio, call his tournament the unofficial “fifth major”. The 2022 version will be no different.

Several guys ranked in both the top-10 of the FedEx Cup standings and the Official World Golf Rankings will be teeing it up for the 47th annual Memorial Tournament presented by Workday.

Of the top-10 golfers in the OWGR, Nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10 will be hitting the links in the 120-man field at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio on Thursday morning.

Those seven are, respectively, Jon Rahm, Cameron Smith, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth.

Rahm and Cantlay are also past winners of the Memorial with Rahm taking home the trophy in 2020 and Cantlay winning in 2019 as well as last year.

However, absent are the current FedEx and OWGR No. 1 Scottie Sheffler as well as OWGR's No. 5 Justin Thomas and No. 9 Sam Burns, which may be a bummer considering Sheffler is hot off of winning the Masters in April, Thomas won the PGA Championship two weeks ago in stunning fashion and Sam Burns just won the Charles Schwab Challenge on Sunday after beating Sheffler in a one-hole playoff.

Also absent is one of the GOAT’s, Tiger Woods.

That doesn’t come as a surprise, though, after Woods withdrew following the end of his third round of the PGA Championship, which was only his second tournament played after the horrific car accident he was in 15 months ago.

Woods said afterwards the pain in his leg was too much to bear for even one more day of walking the hilly Southern Hills course in Tulsa, Okla. He shot a 79 for the round, the worst single round in his PGA Championship history.

Nonetheless, the field is still stacked with prominent names both in the FedEx Cup and OWGR standings as well as some recognizable names in Memorial Tournament lore.

Present will be Cantlay and Rahm as well as past champions Jason Dufner (2017), William McGirt (2016), David Lingmerth (2015), Hideki Matsuyama (2014) and Matt Kuchar (2013).

Bryson DeChambeau, who won in 2018 but hasn’t played since this year’s Masters when he missed the cut at 12-over par due to an injury, will return after having successful surgery to the hamate bone in his left hand at The Kettering Medical Center in Kettering, Ohio.

Of the tourney’s returning champs, Cantlay, DeChambeau, Matsuyama, Lingmerth and McGirt all won in a playoff, including Cantlay’s win over Morikama last year. The tournament had only four playoffs in 38 previous renditions going into 2014 but have seen five since then. They were also the first PGA Tour wins for Matsuyama, Lingmerth and McGirt, which is still McGirt's only Tour victory to date. Lingmerth has one additional win, which came three years earlier on the Korn Ferry Tour in the Neediest Kids Championship.

Also of note is Cantlay owning the lowest final round for a champion in Memorial history (64) while McGirt can brag about tying two-time U.S. Open champ Curtis Strange for the lowest third round for a Memorial champ(64). Matsuyama has the largest comeback for a winner after finding himself down seven strokes entering the final round while McGirt is tied with several others for the second-largest comeback being down by six going into Sunday. Cantlay owns boasting rights about winning as many Memorial tournaments as legends Tom Watson, Greg Norman and the tourney’s creator himself, Jack. Only two others have more Memorial wins, being Tiger (5) and Kenny Perry (3).

Others in the FedEx Cup standings that will be there, too: Max Homa (No. 6), Tom Hoge (9), Cameron Young (12), Will Zalatoris (13) and Joaquin Niemann (18). Mito Pereira, who was set to win the PGA Championship after going into the final round with a seven-stroke lead but lost it after shooting a 75 which included a double bogey on the final hole, will make his first-ever Memorial Tournament appearance.