Vision
Columbus is where Nicklaus was born and raised, learned the game of golf, went to college, and where he started his own family. It was Nicklaus's vision to create a golf club that embodied his personal and professional life and to create a golf tournament that would long represent his passion for tournament golf, and would give back to a community that has embraced him and the game. This vision was fulfilled in May 1976 with the first Memorial Tournament, two years to the day after the doors were opened and the first shots played at Muirfield Village. The par-72 course was set at 7,072 yards (6,467 m), a considerable length for the mid-1970s.
Nicklaus signalled his intent to host his own tournament during Masters Week in 1966, when he spoke of his desire to create a tournament that, like The Masters, had a global interest, and was inspired by the history and traditions of the game of golf. He also wanted the tournament to give back in the form of charitable contributions to organizations benefiting needy adults and children throughout Columbus and Ohio. The primary charitable beneficiary of the tournament is Nationwide Children's Hospital.
The Memorial reached the height of its popularity in the 1990s having reached "Sold-Out" status, a first on the PGA Tour other than the major championships. For a variety of reasons the event has started seeing ticket sales decrease during the last five years.
Read more about this topic: Memorial Tournament
Famous quotes containing the word vision:
“One will meet, for example, the virtual assumption that what is relative to thought cannot be real. But why not, exactly? Red is relative to sight, but the fact that this or that is in that relation to vision that we call being red is not itself relative to sight; it is a real fact.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“Redeem
The time. Redeem.
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavouring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)