2016 Memorial Tournament: Tee times, pairings for Sunday’s final round

In a completely expected twist, bad weather has impacted the schedule at the Memorial. This is a tradition unlike any other at Muirfield Village, which can never seem to dodge mother nature when hosting pro golf events. The Memorial is notorious for getting thrown way off schedule and relentlessly hammered by thunderstorms. Even the Presidents Cup, which we were told would go unaffected because of its October date, got crushed three years ago. It’s just a rep the Memorial has acquired. There are years when the tournament escapes without much weather trouble, but this year is not one of them.

Heavy rains and thunderstorms pounded Muirfield Village late on Saturday, forcing a suspension of play with just eight players still out on the course, but the third round resumed before darkness to get everyone through 54 holes before Sunday morning.

More of the heavy stuff is supposed hit Columbus Sunday afternoon, so the Tour has reacted and taken the fairly common measure of moving tee times way up and into a two-hour block of threesomes. This is what they do on the weekend after the cut has been made and if there’s bad weather looming or ground has been lost with the schedule behind. This is a precautionary approach and one that makes sense. The worst case scenario is sending them off in twos all day and then having half the field finish up with the leaders stuck in the clubhouse just watching it rain and having to come back on Monday.

The Tour will utilize split tees with the first groups going at 8:30 a.m. ET off Nos. 1 and 10. The leaders will be out last at 10:30 a.m., setting up a finish (barring no weather interruptions) a little after 3 p.m., perhaps as late as 3:30. The threat of storms picks up around 3 p.m. so they should sneak it in, even if it’s some three hours before they wanted to finish up on television.

A soft, wet golf course does allow some of the chasers from deep down the board to go low and make a late Sunday charge. The biggest names hovering outside that first page of the leaderboard are Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson. Rory is five shots back and Phil is four shots off the pace. They’ll need to post a low outward number before lunchtime to even have a chance, but we saw some of those scores and big jumps up the leaderboard on Saturday.

Here’s the full tee sheet for Sunday’s final round:

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