Jack Nicklaus is hosting his PGA Tour event, the Memorial Tournament, for the 51st time in 2026 at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. The Golden Bear debuted this tournament in 1975, and he created it in the likeness of the Masters Tournament -- the actual, formal name of the event most everyone knows simply as the Masters.
"The name of the tournament, it's called the Memorial Tournament. And the reason it's called the Memorial Tournament is that the Masters also is called the Masters Tournament," Nicklaus said.
"And why is the Masters called a tournament? Well, it's called a tournament because Bobby Jones did not want it to be called a championship. Jones felt like he was using what the USGA and the R&A, and the PGA, and the players that played best in those three championships made up his field at the Masters, and it would be presumptuous to call it a championship, so he called it a tournament."
Nicklaus didn't want to name his event to suggest it was on the level of a US Open or Open Championship or the PGA Championship.
"And I didn't want to be presumptuous here in calling this any more than a tournament because I felt like our goal was to be of service to the game of golf and to try to further the game, bring the game back to the place where I grew up, bring it back to the people here."
All these years later, the Memorial is one of the biggest events on the schedule, and the town of Dublin has grown some 100 times in size in terms of population. Nicklaus is proud to have grown the event as the city has grown, too.
"We had great support from Dublin," he said. "About 60,000 people (currently) in Dublin," he said. "Well, Dublin's done fairly well. I think we probably had a pretty big influence on that. We're very proud of that. And we've had great support from the whole Central Ohio and actually the whole golfing world."
