Welcome to Jack's Place

Now that the NCAA Division 1 Men's Golf Championship is done -- congrats to the University of Alabama on defending their title and to Stanford's Cameron Wilson on winning the individual title -- now that they're done, we can move on to Muirfield Village and the Memorial Tournament.



Jack's Place always attracts one of the best fields of the year, and many players are looking for success this week as a predictor of US Open success in a couple of weeks. Players we haven't seen for a while, like Jason Day, are back in action. Adam Scott and Rory McIlroy come in fresh off wins this past week. And Phil Mickelson comes in on a wave of uncertainty, having still failed to put four good rounds together in the same week.

But that's the sort of thing that makes the rumble at Jack's Place so interesting. You KNOW everybody wants to win the Memorial and shake Jack's hand Sunday, but they can't help but think about that next major just around the corner...

One player who won't be at either Muirfield Village or Pinehurst is Tiger, who -- surprise, surprise! -- still hasn't recovered enough from his back surgery to make either tournament. He called Jack to apologize for the first and posted the second on Wednesday... as if any of us are surprised. His recovery is going to take some time, and I for one don't expect to see Tiger at a major until next year. (And I expect him to be a very real threat when he gets there!)

But for all of you Jack fans out there, GC has a nice lead-in to the tournament today:

• At noon ET they're running Masters Highlights 1986: Jack Nicklaus. (NOON UPDATE: Apparently GC changed the programming from what's listed in my program guide. Inside the PGA Tour and Champions Tour Learning Center are now being advertised.)
• At 1pm ET they're running the Feherty episode where he interviewed Jack. (NOON UPDATE: GC says it will repeat the noon schedule.)

Then, as usual, Golf Central comes on at 2pm ET with tournament coverage beginning at 2:30pm ET.

I'm very interested to see how Adam does this week. Not one of PGATOUR.com's experts picked Adam as the likely winner. Out of 13 experts:

• Matt Kuchar and Justin Rose each got 3 votes
• Rory McIlroy got 2 votes
• Dustin Johnson got 2 votes
• Jason Dufner, Kevin Chappell, and Phil Mickelson got 1 vote each.

The World #1 might take a bit of exception to that. (In his photo above, taken from the Experts' Page, he certainly appears a bit miffed by the snub. Don't you think so?) It's okay, Adam -- I'll pick you!

This should be a very interesting week!