Posted March 23, 2026
Scottie Scheffler withdrew this morning to welcome the birth of his second child — a moment that reshapes the entire landscape of this tournament. DataGolf had him priced at nearly 20% win probability, making him effectively a one-in-five chance to win in a field of 135. No other player was within ten percentage points of that number.
Memorial Park now hosts its most open field since the Doak redesign era began. Nineteen players inside the OWGR top 50 remain committed — this is still the deepest non-Signature field of the spring — but there is no clear heir to Scheffler's vacated probability. Two-time 2026 winner Chris Gotterup enters as the model's likely new top pick by default. Defending champion Min Woo Lee, Brooks Koepka in his ongoing PGA Tour return, and a cluster of players fighting for Masters invitations round out a field that looks to be, for the first time in years here, genuinely anyone's tournament. A forecasted Saturday cold front threatens to split it in half.
Tom Doak's $34 million redesign stripped Memorial Park to 19 bunkers — the fewest on any PGA Tour course — and replaced them with wide driving corridors, tightly mown runoff areas, false fronts, and collection zones around elevated green complexes. The removal of punishing rough was intentional. It is also one of the most debated features of this golf course. Wide fairways may not neutralize distance so much as unleash it — players can attack off the tee without much fear of penalty, which means length could be worth more than it appears on paper.
One common read on Memorial Park is that driving doesn't matter much here — wide fairways, minimal rough, hit it wherever and go find it. There's something to that. But the distinction worth drawing is between direction and distance. Avoiding the rough is one thing; generating shorter irons into these elevated, contoured green complexes is another. Long hitters who attack these fairways can turn par 4s into wedges. Shorter hitters play a different golf course. With warm, dry conditions forecast for Thursday and Friday, rollout amplifies that gap further. More than a quarter of approach shots here come from 200-plus yards — the big hitters aren't just surviving the layout, they're reshaping it.
The five Memorial Park champions make this worth noting. Min Woo Lee, Stephan Jaeger, Tony Finau, Jason Kokrak, and Carlos Ortiz span the stylistic spectrum — but every one of them brought distance upside into their winning week. Four of the five gained distance versus the field in 9 of their 10 most recent starts before winning. That leading indicator — not distance rank, not season average, but recent distance trajectory — seems to be the clearest pre-tournament signal at this venue.
Then you have to finish it. Every champion here has been a top-5 putter for the week — no exceptions across five editions. The short game picture is a little more forgiving than the tricky green complexes might suggest: Kokrak won wire-to-wire with a scrambling week that most players would consider a liability, carrying it almost entirely on his putter. The greens seem to punish the catastrophic misses more than the merely average ones. The profile that keeps emerging is distance off the tee, a hot putter when it matters, and short game that simply stays out of trouble.
Five par 4s measure over 490 yards. The 14th (529 yards) posts a 35% bogey rate. The par-5 16th (616 yards) with its peninsula green is the tournament's defining risk-reward hole — and the bombers tend to reach it in two comfortably while shorter hitters lay up. The profile to watch for: distance upside off the tee, a putting ceiling, and short game that doesn't get in the way.
| Year | Winner | Score | SG: Putt Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Min Woo Lee | -20 (260) | 2nd |
| 2024 | Stephan Jaeger | -12 (268) | 3rd |
| 2022 | Tony Finau | -16 (264) | 2nd |
| 2021 | Jason Kokrak | -10 (270) | 1st |
| 2020 | Carlos Ortiz | -13 (267) | 5th |
The course history data adds a second layer. Among the main contenders with 12 or more Memorial Park rounds, the "versus expected" figures — how much a player beats their own baseline at this specific venue — reinforce the distance-upside theme: Jaeger, Finau, and Clark all fit the profile and all consistently outperform their own baselines here.
With Scheffler out, Jaeger leads the remaining field in both historical strokes gained and versus-expected among players with meaningful Memorial Park experience. The fit adjustment column shows what the model actually applies per round — Jaeger sits at the top of that list, ahead of Finau and Clark. The players who seem to bring something extra to this venue all share a common thread: they can generate real distance off the tee when their game is on. That pattern is worth paying attention to.
| Player | DG Win% | Market% | Edge | Fit Adj |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chris Gotterup | ~5.5% | 3.7% | +1.8% | +0.01 |
| Min Woo Lee | ~4.8% | 4.3% | +0.5% | +0.04 |
| Sam Burns | ~4.2% | 3.9% | +0.3% | +0.01 |
| Jake Knapp | ~4.0% | 3.7% | +0.3% | -0.01 |
| Wyndham Clark | ~3.8% | 1.8% | +2.0% | +0.04 |
| Brooks Koepka | ~3.0% | 3.6% | -0.6% | +0.01 |
| Nicolái Højgaard | ~2.8% | 2.7% | +0.1% | — |
| Tony Finau | ~2.5% | 1.2% | +1.3% | +0.05 |
| Harris English | ~2.4% | 2.6% | -0.2% | +0.02 |
Fit Adj = course history adjustment per round (strokes added to model baseline). Source: Memorial Park course history CSV, 2020–2025.
With Scheffler out, his roughly 20% share of modeled probability gets redistributed across the field. The market will likely funnel a good chunk of it toward Gotterup — the most recognizable name with the strongest recent-form story. That's defensible on form alone. But the course-fit data was already pointing toward a different tier before any of this happened: Jaeger, Finau, Min Woo Lee, and Clark all carry meaningful venue advantages that the market has tended to undervalue, and Scheffler's withdrawal arguably makes that gap wider.
Wyndham Clark looks like one of the more complete fits on the board: distance upside, a course history that trends in the right direction, and positive putting across all five of his Memorial Park starts. Jake Knapp is worth a note of caution in the other direction — his course history data suggests this venue hasn't treated him well relative to his baseline, which is a quiet headwind in a week where the course profile matters more than usual.
Live trend scores and course fit rankings for the full field at caddiegi.com/research
The defending champion — and the player whose course history numbers, while based on a small sample, are the most striking in this field. His win last year at -20 was a near-perfect expression of what this course seems to reward: bombing wide fairways to get shorter irons, then finishing top 2 in putting for the week. This is the blueprint that has defined every Memorial Park champion.
The honest caveat is the sample size: four rounds at one venue, all from a single dominant week, carry real uncertainty. The model adjusts for thin experience. But he is a genuine distance threat, a proven putter on bermudagrass, and the only player in this field who has already lifted this trophy. With Scheffler out and the field genuinely open, the defending champion at +1100 feels like a price worth considering.
Two wins in 2026 and a rapidly climbing world ranking. Gotterup is a genuine bomber — his ball speed and aggressive off-the-tee approach align naturally with what Memorial Park's wide corridors tend to reward. His prior results here are modest, but they don't reflect the player he's become. The form argument for him this week is as strong as anyone's in the field.
The open question is whether his short game and putter can complete the picture. Distance will get him shorter irons. Then he has to convert on MiniVerde bermuda where every champion has been a top-5 putter for the week. His scrambling has improved since last fall. If the putter shows up, the rest of the profile is already there.
One of the more interesting prices on the board, and he arguably fits the Memorial Park winner profile at every checkpoint. Clark is a genuine distance threat — length off the tee is part of why he won at Pebble Beach, and why this course has seemed to suit him a little better every year he's played it. Eighteen rounds here, finish trend steadily improving: missed cut early, T41, T16, T31, T5. The model's course history data suggests this venue treats him well above his baseline, which is the kind of detail that tends to get overlooked at 54-to-1.
The other piece of his profile that stands out: he has gained strokes putting in all five of his Memorial Park starts. In a week where every champion has been a top-5 putter, that consistency is the most important thing on his card. He comes in off a run of strong results — a win at Pebble Beach, a runner-up at Bay Hill, a runner-up at The Players. The form is real. The course history is real. The price suggests the market may not be connecting those two things yet.
The 2024 champion, coming off a T7 at Valspar. The thing about Jaeger that's easy to miss is that he isn't just a former winner here — the model's course history data suggests he outperforms his own baseline at Memorial Park by a wider margin than any other player with significant experience at this venue. His finish sequence tells the same story: T35, T9, 1st, T11. He keeps getting better here the more rounds he plays.
He's not the longest player in the field, but one of the patterns common to every Memorial Park winner is a distance spike in the weeks leading up to their title. Jaeger fit that pattern in 2024 — gaining distance versus the field in 9 of his 10 pre-win starts. He's in form, he knows this course, and the model rates his course fit near the top of the field. At 65/1, the market seems to have moved on from him a little quickly.
The wire-to-wire winner here in 2022, by four strokes — still the widest margin of victory in the Memorial Park era. Finau is one of the longest players on Tour, and that win was a near-perfect illustration of what this course tends to reward: bombing wide fairways to set up shorter irons, finishing second in putting for the week, and scrambling just well enough to stay out of trouble. His last three trips to this venue have produced a win and a runner-up in the three times he's made the cut.
The course history data rates him highly at Memorial Park — he's among the handful of players who seem to genuinely outperform their own baseline here, not just play well. At 80/1, it's possible the market is underweighting how well his power-and-putter profile maps to what this specific course tends to ask for.
Scheffler's withdrawal turns a week that felt like a coronation into a genuinely open tournament. The market needs a new anchor, and Gotterup is the obvious candidate — two wins in 2026, ranked inside the top 10 in the world, a power game that fits this course. That's a reasonable place to land. But it's worth pausing to ask whether the course-history data was already pointing somewhere the market hasn't fully priced — and whether Scheffler's exit just made that gap more visible.
Jaeger's numbers at Memorial Park are the most compelling of any player with meaningful experience here. He outperforms his own baseline at this venue by a wider margin than anyone else in the field, and his 2024 win came after a stretch where he was trending upward in distance in almost every start leading into the week. He finished T7 at Valspar last week and appears to be in good form. At 65/1, there's an argument that the market has moved on from him a little quickly.
The fundamental question at Memorial Park doesn't really change because of who withdrew. It's still the same one it's been since the Doak redesign: who can generate enough distance off the tee to take advantage of these wide corridors, and who can get hot with the putter when it counts? Every winner here has done both. Without Scheffler in the field, the players who most clearly fit that profile — Jaeger, Clark, Finau, Min Woo Lee — may be worth more attention than their current prices suggest.