Featured Groups: Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide

Eight of the top nine players in the world are set to play the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, starting with reigning FedExCup champion Justin Thomas and including Dustin Johnson and Justin Rose, who round out the top three. Rose might be the hottest player on the planet after his bravura performance at the Fort Worth Invitational, which also moved him up to second in the FedExCup. He dominated from tee to green in picking up his ninth PGA TOUR victory, and now heads to the site of his first TOUR win in 2010, Muirfield Village. He might be just hitting his stride at 37. There’s also five-time Memorial champ Tiger Woods, playing the Memorial for the first time since 2015. He’s one of six players who have won it more than once, and the only one not in the World Golf Hall of Fame. (Yeah, we think he’ll get there, too.) Ten of the 11 Memorial winners in the FedExCup era have qualified for the season-ending TOUR Championship. Woods posted a T11 in his last start, at THE PLAYERS Championship. That was of a piece with his other starts in Florida, where he finished 12th at The Honda Classic, T2 at the Valspar Championship, and T5 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. He is still seeking his 80th TOUR win. PGA TOUR LIVE Thursday-Friday broadcasts will begin at 7:30 a.m. ET and end at 3 p.m. We will move to Featured Holes Coverage at 3 p.m., ending at 6:30 p.m. Here are the Featured Groups: (Note: Tee times TBA; FedExCup ranking in parentheses.) Jason Day (3), Dustin Johnson (9), Rory McIlroy (36) Three players who have tasted No. 1 in the world, three players who have already won this season. Of course, Johnson wins every year like clockwork, but Day and McIlroy broke through after failing to lift a trophy last season. McIlroy is the only one of the three to have won the FedExCup (2016), and also has the best record at Muirfield Village, albeit without having won: T10 in 2010, 5th in ’11, T15 in ’14, and T4 in ’16. (He didn’t play the tournament two of the last three years.) Day, who lives in Columbus, has lamented his poor record at the Memorial, but seems to be getting closer to winning after a T15 last year, his best result so far. Bubba Watson (7), Phil Mickelson (4), Jordan Spieth (30) Two lefties (Watson, Mickelson) join up with a young star who plays right-handed but is actually left-handed (Spieth). Watson, who has won twice this season, has come close to winning the Memorial with a T6 last year (final-round 73) and a third-place finish in 2014. Spieth opened with a 66 at Muirfield Village last year before fading with a final-round 73 for a T13 finish. He’s looking for his first win since The Open Championship last July. Mickelson broke a winless drought dating to 2013 at the WGC-Mexico Championship earlier this season, and while he has 43 PGA TOUR victories, none has come at the Memorial, where he has authored few highlights other than top-10s in 2002 (T9), ’06 (T4) and ’10 (T5). Tiger Woods (54), Justin Rose (2), Jason Dufner (62) Three players who have won a combined seven Memorial titles, with Woods accounting for five of them. Rose, the 2010 champion here, is coming off a convincing victory at the Fort Worth Invitational in which he had total command from tee to green and moved from 11th to second in the FedExCup. Dufner looked like he had shot himself out of the tournament with a third-round 77 last year, but rallied in the final round for the victory. Two of the three players represented the winning U.S. Presidents Cup team at Muirfield Village in 2013, and Rose is a shoe-in to make this year’s European Ryder Cup Team. Justin Thomas (1), Patrick Reed (6), Rickie Fowler (21) Thomas is making a strong bid to become the first player to successfully defend as FedExCup champion, and he and Reed are both winners already this season. Thomas, of course, is a two-time winner—one of five so far this season along with Jason Day, Patton Kizzire, Bubba Watson and Rose—and was in the mix to win the Memorial last year before finishing T4. Fowler is looking to break through for the first time this season after runner-up finishes at the Masters and OHL Classic at Mayakoba. He has flirted with winning the Memorial with a runner-up in his 2010 debut (final round 73), and a T2 finish last year, when the final round featured two rain delays and was completed near darkness.

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