Muirfield Village Golf Club has humbled the best golfers. Rory McIlroy, for one, has had 14 starts here in his career. But this week, he admitted that the course frustrated him throughout. But that wouldn’t mean you take the complaint directly to the course designer, would it? The four-time PGA Tour winner, Kevin Kisner, disagreed and did just that, as he recently recalled.

One year, after a tough Tuesday, Kisner was frustrated with hole 16. So, when he went for lunch, he sat down next to Jack Nicklaus. When the architect behind the Muirfield Village Golf Club asked him what he thought of the course, Kisner didn’t have the best compliments, but neither did Nicklaus let him be happy about calling him out:

Kisner: “Well, your 16th hole is complete dog sh*t, Mr. Nicklaus. I mean, you can’t hold the green.”
Nicklaus: “I mean, come on, kid, it’s just a 5-iron. Just hit it higher.”
Kisner: “I could not get it any higher.”
Nicklaus (shrugged): “Well, it’s probably not for you.”

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“It was so bad he’s redone it twice since then,” Kisner concluded in the recent interview with the Foreplay podcast. He even quipped that Nicklaus might like him better now, given that he was honest and forthright about what he truly felt about the course. And it wouldn’t be just Kisner mentioning the 16th hole.

When the course opened in 1974, Nicklaus polled members on which holes they liked best and received 14 different selections. One of the most notable ones was the 16th.

Hole 16 was a modest par-3 featuring a fairly long green with a very deep bunker. It guarded the front-left portion of the putting surface. The par 3 was difficult to get right, as the wind can swirl around the valley, and the green complex made it extremely difficult to hold the green. When the wind shifts from the southwest to the northwest, even a perfectly struck iron can travel past the green, bounce off, and leave players scrambling on a downslope towards water.

In 2011, Nicklaus took a bulldozer to the course’s longest par 3 at 215 yards. His idea was to force a more demanding shot and introduce visible peril. In the years that followed, the hole became the second- and third-hardest on the course statistically. Players kept struggling, watching well-struck shots run off the back, and left the hole shaking their heads.

After redesigning the hole again in the 2013 Presidents Cup, Nicklaus discovered the green was actually pitching away from players rather than towards it. He ended up removing elevation from the middle portion of the green and redistributing it elsewhere. But that did little to help players.

In 2023, Jordan Spieth said it was not a great hole in pretty much everybody’s opinion. On the other hand, Jason Day ended up calling it a “stupid hole” on the Golf Channel microphone that Nicklaus happened to hear. Day, notably, is a member of the Muirfield Village but famously said he plays the course only during tournament weeks. Nicklaus took the criticism like a good sport yet again.

“No, I think he might be right,” he said. “My guess is I’ll change the hole. I don’t want guys walking around saying, God, what a great 17-hole golf course.”

However, it was never Nicklaus’ wish to give a win to the golfers just as simply.

Nicklaus’ inspiration and the birth of the Memorial Tournament

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Memorial Tournament, a course born from a personal tragedy after Nicklaus’s friends died in a plane crash on their way to the 1966 Masters. That loss pushed the then 26-year-old Nicklaus to think about a legacy beyond trophies and eventually led him home to Columbus to build something that would outlast his playing career. And that led to the building of Muirfield Village.

“I took the golf course to the people who were my partners in the development, and I said, ‘Look, guys, I’m really not interested in the development. I’m interested in the golf course. I’ll just trade you. I’ll give you the development, which they were delighted to have. Golf courses were not winners,” Nicklaus said.

“I structured Muirfield so that I couldn’t make any money, and I did that on purpose. I was playing golf at the time, and I didn’t want my fellow competitors saying, ‘Oh, hey, Jack’s just profiting off of us coming into his town.’ So I structured Muirfield where I couldn’t make a dime. And I did that on purpose.”

Nicklaus made clear his intentions for Muirfield Village as a showpiece of what the game of golf should be. He modeled it on the Augusta National. The course had ample fairway width, would have maximum visibility, and would be routed with as many holes as possible to play downhill. Soon, it became one of the most revered venues on the PGA Tour. But one hole on this course has never stopped causing problems, and it has been that way since the beginning.

Jack Nicklaus’ ideology behind the golf course

Speaking at the 50th anniversary of the Memorial Tournament, Nicklaus opened up about the design thinking behind Muirfield Village and the specific way he believes it needs to be played.

“I didn’t design it for big hitters. I didn’t design it for short hitters. I didn’t design it for the middle. I tried to design it so that we could take care of everybody and try to give a fair shake to every kind of hitter. It is a philosophy that has consistently humbled the game’s biggest bombers.”

For example, Rory McIlroy, one of the longest and most accurate drivers in the world, has admitted openly that the course neutralizes his greatest weapon, forcing him to play strategically like everyone else on the field.

“It’s a golf course that takes a bit of patience and learning. When you get that, you can’t just stand up and whack it away at every hole. I tried that in my early years. I didn’t do very well.”

The course demands accuracy over power, a principle Nicklaus built into every green complex. Modern tour players who rely on low, spinning iron shots to stop the ball quickly are repeatedly punished here. Nicklaus himself put a number to it. On a particularly difficult Saturday at the Memorial Tournament, only 36% of the field held the 16th green.

“I’ve never played this with spin. I play it with trajectory, not spin. I think spin gets you a little more trouble. I think Augusta is much a trajectory golf course.”

All in all, it seems Nicklaus never wanted Muirfield Village to be conquered by force, but it was meant to be understood.