DUBLIN, Ohio – Jack Nicklaus is the greatest major champion the game of golf has ever known.
Throughout his stellar career, he got the best of the game’s best and all others to win golf’s four most important tournaments a record 18 times and finished runner-up 19 times. In all, he won 73 PGA Tour titles. As Tom Weiskopf said years ago, “Jack knew he was going to beat you. You knew Jack was going to beat you. And Jack knew that you knew that he was going to beat you.”
Obviously, a few players got the better of Nicklaus from time to time in the majors and many other tournaments. Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Gary Player and Seve Ballesteros were among those who hoisted major championship hardware with Nicklaus looking on.
But there’s one man who has caused Nicklaus more fits than anyone for 50 years.
Chief Leatherlips.
While there’s no confirmation that the chief ever teed up a feathery, the former head of the Wyandot tribe has had Nicklaus’ number more times than not despite being executed in 1810 by members of his own tribe for being too friendly with settlers and refusing to take up arms against them. The execution was ordered by Chief Leatherlips’ brother, Roundhead.
While Nicklaus obviously never met Chief Leatherlips, he became associated with him a little over 160 years later when he broke ground on his sweeping Muirfield Village Golf Club, home to The Memorial.
Local lore holds that the tournament’s host built part of his club an ancient Native American burial ground that includes the final resting place of Chief Leatherlips, who is buried on the spot where he was executed by tomahawk.
Thus, while no evidence supports this contention, locals believe the chief curses the tournament every year.
Rain, wind, fog, hail, snow and even a horde of cicadas have played through the event since the maiden voyage in 1976. The joke in these parts is when the dates for the Memorial roll around, animals start lining up two by two.
Nicklaus smiles when asked about the spirit of Chief Leatherlips cursing his event.
“It just makes for a good story,” Nicklaus said. “And a fun one.”
Nicklaus felt Leatherlips’ wrath early on when he won his first of two Memorials in 1977. The victory came on a Monday because thunderstorms and threats of lightning halted Sunday’s final round.
It was the first of 30 of the 46 editions of the Memorial to be affected by bad weather. In those 30 storm-ravaged years, nearly 50 of the rounds were delayed.
And there have been extremes. In 1979, a wind chill of 13 degrees whipped through Muirfield Village. In 1989, Nicklaus moved the tournament to mid-May – and it snowed. The 1990 tournament was shortened to 54 holes with Greg Norman declared the winner. In 2001, Tiger Woods survived six suspensions of play to win the third of his five Memorials.
Jason Day moved to the area in 2010 and immediately became familiar with the tale of Chief Leatherlips.
“I don’t know the whole story,” Day said. “And recently the weather has been all right, right? And we’re supposed to get decent weather this week, right?”
No, and, well, yes.
In recent years, since 2016 to be precise, eight rounds were delayed by heavy rain showers, fog and lightning. As for this year, the current forecast calls for 80 and 60 percent chances of storms on Wednesday and Thursday and blue skies thereafter.
Fingers crossed.
As for the worst of the weather Day has seen, he instantly goes back to the 2013 Presidents Cup at Muirfield Village. Played the first week of October, each of the four days of competition was altered because of rain, rain and more rain. It had been more than 20 years that Dublin received 2 inches of rain over four consecutive days the first week of October, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
“We got nearly the entire month of rain in four days,” Day said.
Somehow, the tournament ended on Sunday. By the way, the Memorial that year saw its second round delayed.
Billy Horschel has played The Memorial eight times and calls it one of his favorites despite five of those years being disrupted from above.
“For as good as everything is at Jack’s place, the way the players and family are treated and taken care of, the milkshakes which are the best on Tour, course conditions, practice facilities, the history,” Horschel said before pausing. Then he smiled and joked, “The weather is one thing Jack has never gotten right.”
While players pack a few extra layers of rain gear when heading to Dublin, Luke Donald has learned to just go with what happens and head to the clubhouse.
“Bad weather?” Luke Donald said. “Just an excuse to drink more milkshakes.”
