Sunday Matters: Why you need to see the PGA Tour's Memorial finale

The seventh of eight signature events on the PGA Tour’s 2026 schedule is headed down the stretch.

There’s still quite a bit of golf to be played after Saturday’s third round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday was suspended for the day due to weather in the late afternoon, setting up a marathon Sunday on a golf course that always tests the ability of every player in the field, in an event with the utmost prestige and honor thanks to its legendary host, Jack Nicklaus.

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Here are the biggest storylines you need to know heading into the final round of play. Here’s why Sunday matters:

Mother Nature is not a golf fan. Well, at least not this week in central Ohio. The Memorial Tournament faced two separate weather delays Saturday, both exceeding an hour, the second of which halted play for the rest of the day. A round of thunderstorms carrying heavy rain and lightning swept over the area just after 4:30 p.m. ET Saturday and golfers were never sent back out due to poor course conditions.

Action is set to resume Sunday at 7:30 a.m., with some players facing a marathon day, still needing to play the majority of their third round. The last pairing off the tee, consisting of J.T. Poston and Ryan Gerard, only managed to finish five holes Saturday before tournament officials blew the horn.

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Fortunately, the forecast looks much more favorable Sunday, with just a small chance of rain and otherwise partly cloudy skies with temperatures in the mid-80s.

Here’s what the top of the leaderboard looked like when play was suspended for the day Saturday afternoon.

It’s hard to say that J.T. Poston and Ryan Gerard are the frontrunners heading into the final round, considering they still have 13 holes to play in their third round, but both players occupy the top spot on the leaderboard entering Sunday’s action and neither are showing any signs of slowing down.

J.T. Poston wowed the golf world with a 7-under 65 in the second round Friday amid brutally windy conditions that gave most players in the field fits. Not Poston, though. He made eight birdies, including four in his first five holes, to put himself in contention for his fourth career PGA Tour victory and his first since the 2024 Shriners Children’s Open. Poston is making his money with his irons and wedges thus far, ranking No. 1 in the field in Strokes Gained: On Approach and hitting the most greens in regulation. He’s had a rough start to 2026, missing four cuts and finishing no better than T-21, but he’s got a great chance to right the ship Sunday at Muirfield Village.

Ryan Gerard, meanwhile, continues to establish himself as a breakout star on the PGA Tour. He earned his first win last summer at the Barracuda Championship and began this season with a solo second place at the Sony Open in Hawaii and a T-2 the following week at the American Express. He hit a bit of a lull in March and April, but finished T-10 at the Charles Schwab Challenge last week to gain a little momentum back. It looks like he’s carried that momentum to the Memorial and he has a chance to parlay that into his second career PGA Tour victory on Sunday.

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Sam Burns has been a mainstay on the PGA Tour for years now, representing the U.S. on two Ryder Cup teams and racking up nearly $7 million in official career earnings. He burst onto the scene with four wins between 2021 and 2022, and added another at the 2023 WGC Match Play event. But that was the last time the 29-year-old Louisiana native tasted victory. He contended at the Masters this past April but couldn’t keep up on Sunday, ultimately finishing tied for seventh. Burns is one of those players who seems like he should have more wins than he does (especially in recent years) because he’s really good most weeks. He could put that notion to bed with a stellar Performance Sunday at the Memorial.

And if you want to talk about close calls, look no further than Eric Cole. Known in the golf world as the King of the Mini Tours, Cole is still seeking his first PGA Tour victory, and he’s never been closer than he was just last week at the Charles Schwab Challenge, where he held the solo lead for much of the day Sunday before Russell Henley went on a heater down the stretch, forcing a playoff and defeating Cole with a birdie on the first extra hole. Cole graciously accepted defeat, as he always does, but it stands to reason that one really stung. He has three runner-up finishes in his career and nine top-10s without a win, but the 37-year-old is still fighting, and he once again finds himself in position to capture that elusive victory. Could Sunday finally be Eric Cole’s day at Jack’s Place? Golf fans would sure love to see that.

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The Memorial Tournament isn’t being played in Texas, so maybe it isn’t reasonable to think J.J. Spaun could erase a six-shot deficit to win Sunday at Muirfield Village on Sunday. Then again, he’s playing really, really good golf of late and certainly has the ball striking ability to come from behind. Spaun earned his first PGA Tour victory at the Valero Texas Open in 2022 and won there again this past March. He also contended at the Charles Schwab Challenge in the Dallas area last week, finishing T-6. In fact, in his last three starts in PGA Tour events (not counting his missed cut at the PGA Championship), he’s placed no worse than T-14. Many seemed to think that his unlikely victory at the 2025 U.S. Open was just a flash in the pan, but Spaun, ranked No. 9 in the world, continues to establish himself as one of the best players on the planet and he’ll enter Sunday at the Memorial in solo eighth with a chance to pick up his second win of the year.

The 18th at Muirfield Village Golf Club is one of, if not the toughest finishing hole among the PGA Tour’s annual stops. The long par 4 measures about 480 yards, depending on where the tees are set up, and the tee shot is as difficult as they come, especially for someone trying to hold a lead at the Memorial Tournament. Players must avoid a creek that runs along the left rough and three big fairway bunkers to the right of the landing surface. But the sand isn’t the only thing that can pose a hazard to a rightward drive. There’s a massive tree that stands between the first and second bunker that makes the fairway even more narrow. If players get past the tee shot unscathed, an approach into a green guarded by three more bunkers awaits. Par here is a great score, birdie can win a tournament. It’s one of the most drama-producing finishing holes the PGA Tour has to offer.

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Not only is the 18th hole on of the hardest finishing holes on Tour, but the entire golf course at Muirfield Village is arguably the most difficult annual stop for the world’s best golfers. It tests them every year, with its long rough, tight fairways and tricky greens. Just ask the back-to-back champion, Scottie Scheffler.

“I think a test like this, this golf course specifically is a place you can come out, and even if the greens aren’t that fast and there’s not a ton of wind, it will still be challenging because there’s so many areas where you just can’t really miss,” Scheffler said in his pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday. “The greens have a lot of pitch. There’s certain holes where you just have to step up and hit really great golf shots.

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“You think of holes like 12 where there’s really no bailout, 14 there’s really no bailout, 3 there’s not really a bailout to a lot of pin locations. You got to step up there and hit really, really good golf shots. I think golf courses can challenge you in different ways and some of ’em are really good ways to challenge, some of ’em I wouldn’t want to see every week. This is one where I think when you’re testing the ball striking that you do out here, it’s just really challenging. And I think if you hit great shots, you get rewarded for it, and if you start hitting poor shots, you’re going to be punished pretty severely.”

Most tournaments have a rich history and special people who made it possible, but perhaps none more so than the Memorial. The legendary Jack Nicklaus serves as the tournament’s host on a course that he built, which has been the venue for the Memorial every year since 1976. If you do the math, that means this is the 50th anniversary of the revered tournament, one that draws the game’s biggest stars, year in and year out.

“Any time you can play a tournament that has his name on it is something that’s really special. He’s a guy that I look up to, not just from being a great golfer, but he was a great family man as well,” Scheffler said. “And you see it through his tournament, you see his sons here, you see his wife here, you see his grand children everywhere. Mr. Nicklaus is a part of the fabric of this tournament and his family is as well. It’s not just about him. This is a special place for us to be able to come and compete, not only from the challenge of the golf course, but being able to play in front of the fans and carrying on Mr. Nicklaus’ legacy. This is a really cool tournament for us.”

For Nicklaus, it means more than just hosting the world’s best players at the house that he built. For him, it seems that the Memorial is a yearly celebration of the game with which he’s become synonymous, and a chance to keep giving back to that game.

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“Well, I’m not really trying to impact the game any, I’m trying to make sure that just what we do here is right for the game,” Nicklaus said during a press conference Tuesday. “. . . The game of golf’s a great game, it gave me everything that I had the opportunity to do . . . It’s a game that I love and it’s a game that I want to see the traditions of the game being upheld. I think that the golf has been in its recent years has been a big, big, big benefit to charity. Charity’s been a big part of the game of golf and bigger than any other sport. I would like to see that continue. I just think that to be able to show and demonstrate to people that how to sort of kind of, not tell one how to live their life, but I think most of these golfers out here, they play the round of golf, they finish the round, they take their hat off, they shake each other’s hand, and they say, Well done, or they say, ‘Oh, you played like crap today’ — I don’t know what they’re going to say. But it’s always a nice salutation.

“Arnold [Palmer] and I, we had as much of a competition as any two guys could ever have. And we walked off the 18th green, shook hands and shook hands and, you know, it’s, ‘Where are you going to dinner tonight? Well, go grab Winnie, I’ll grab Barbara, we’ll go to dinner.’ That’s the kind of thing that you make the friendships through the game those are the kind of influences I have. I don’t like to see confrontation. I don’t like to see bad blood. I don’t like to see those kind of things happen. I don’t think you have a lot of that in golf. I think we’re very blessed by the nature that the game has is a civil game.”

There’s one signature event remaining after the conclusion of this week’s Memorial Tournament, and that’s the Travelers Championship, which will be played later this month. Here’s a look at the PGA Tour’s 2026 signature event schedule:

Nick Stavas is a digital producer and commerce writer for Golfweek.

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This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Sunday Matters: Why you need to see the PGA Tour’s Memorial finale