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Six of the top 10 in the FedExCup roll into 7,392-yard, par-72 Muirfield Village Golf Club. In addition to No. 1 Matt Kuchar, No. 3 Xander Schauffele and No. 4 Rory McIlroy, the Memorial will feature five-time winner Tiger Woods, who is chasing what would be a record-tying 82nd PGA TOUR victory, Phil Mickelson, and Bryson DeChambeau, whose win here a year ago kicked off a stretch of four victories in 12 starts. Justin Thomas, coming off a wrist injury, will make his first start since the Masters Tournament. In all, the Memorial boasts 23 of the top 30 in the FedExCup standings. Related: Watch Tiger exclusively Thursday on PGA TOUR Live | The First Look | Power Rankings THREE PLAYERS TO PONDER Tiger Woods – Can he rebound after missing the cut at the PGA? It wouldn’t exactly be shocking, as the Memorial is one of seven TOUR events he’s won five or more times.  Rickie Fowler – Suffered first missed cut in 22 starts at the Charles Schwab Challenge, now looks to bounce back at Muirfield Village, where he was T8 last year and T2 in 2017. Matt Kuchar – The newly-minted 41-year-old is the FedExCup leader and playing in a high-wattage group (Phil Mickelson, Fowler), but Kuchar is the only one to have won here, in 2013. THE FLYOVER The hardest hole on the course, the 484-yard, par-4 18th hole played to a 4.211 stroke average last year, giving up just 51 birdies compared to more than twice as many bogeys (93), doubles (12) and others (five) combined. Add that it’s the hole players must face with the trophy on the line (sometimes more than once in less than an hour, in the case of playoff winner Bryson DeChambeau last year), and it’s all the more challenging. The hard dogleg right plays downhill off the tee, with trees, rough and a creek awaiting left misses, but right misses aren’t great, either, as Kyle Stanley found when he bowed out of the playoff last year. Uphill approaches are played to a large, two-tiered green protected by four bunkers and surrounded by spectators.     LANDING ZONE Hit the fairway on the 529-yard, par-5 15th hole and you’re in business; the players who found the short grass off the tee last year averaged 4.56 strokes on the hole, helping make it Muirfield’s third easiest hole. Players who missed the fairways off the tee averaged 5.06. The hole plays slightly uphill and is cut through a forest, so the ideal tee shot avoids overhanging trees on either side and crests the top of the hill, opening up the possibility of reaching in two for long hitters. WEATHER CHECK From meteorologist Wade Stettner: “Stormy conditions are forecast on Thursday with rain and thunderstorm chances possible through much of the day. It will not be an all-day washout on Thursday, but there will be threats for rain and thunderstorms in the morning and afternoon. Temperatures will be cooler on Thursday with a high in the middle 70s. Dry weather is expected on Friday with partly cloudy skies and comfortable temperatures. There is a chance for scattered thunderstorms on both Saturday and Sunday.â€� For the latest weather news from Muirfield Village, check out PGATOUR.COM’s Weather Hub. SOUND CHECK I learned very quickly there’s not a lot to do in South Florida when you can’t golf or fish. BY THE NUMBERS 1 – Number of players to have won the Memorial and the FedExCup in the same year. Woods did it in 2009.  T15 – Local resident Jason Day’s best result, in 2017, in 10 starts at his hometown tournament. It’s his only top-25 finish. 0 – Number of other courses to have hosted the Presidents Cup (2013), Ryder Cup (1987) and Solheim Cup (1998). Muirfield Village also hosted the U.S. Amateur in 1992. SCATTERSHOTS Rankin honored: Judy Rankin, an LPGA winner, a pioneering golf broadcaster, and widely known as one of the nicest people in the game, will be this year’s Memorial honoree in a ceremony planned for Wednesday. Peter Alliss, a broadcasting legend from the other side of the pond (BBC), will also be honored.   Strong international field on tap: In addition to Australia’s Day (who has adopted Columbus as his hometown), the Memorial will feature a deep roster of European players, including Danny Willett, Matthew Fitzpatrick and Alex Noren. Reigning British Amateur champion Jovan Rebula, nephew of Ernie Els, will make his seventh start as a professional. Brothers Carlos and Alvaro Ortiz of Mexico are in the field, too. Alvaro, the younger of the two, won the 2019 Latin America Amateur Championship to earn a spot in the Masters, where he finished T36. He has since turned pro.     Weather adds intrigue: Storms ripped through Ohio and elsewhere earlier this week, and they didn’t spare Muirfield Village. The course has taken a lot of rain and could get more Thursday and this weekend if the forecast is correct, which could put an added premium on distance off the tee. “This one is going to require a lot of good driving,â€� said five-time Memorial champion Tiger Woods. “It’s going to be soft. Guys are going to be aggressive. The ball is not going to be going anywhere.â€� Added Justin Thomas, “When it’s soft like this, it’s going to favor a long hitter.â€�

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Teeing it up with the commissioner

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It started with a tweet. Curtis Strange was up late one night at his home in Morehead City on the North Carolina coast. He couldn’t stop thinking about the destruction left by Hurricane Florence last month. Trees down everywhere. Floodwaters that still hadn’t receded. Blue tarps covering homes that no longer had roofs. Families that had lost absolutely everything. Strange felt helpless. “Honestly, I’ve been through many hurricanes, but this one was the worst for me,â€� he says. “You want to help because you have power, you have a house, a roof above your head and so many don’t.â€� So he took to Twitter to tell people he was going to use his house as a distribution center. Send cleaning supplies and toiletries and paper towels and rubber gloves. Strange would make sure the boxes got to the relief effort. Please just open your hearts and help. Strange even included his home address in the tweet. “My son gave me hell the next day,â€� Strange says with a chuckle. “I said, you know, it’ll take you 60 seconds to find everything about me on Google. So what difference does it make?â€� Three days later, boxes started arriving. Sometimes a dozen a day, sometimes 20 or more. All of which Strange loaded onto the bed of his truck or into the back of the SUV and took to the distribution center at the First United Methodist Church. “It’s been overwhelming,â€� Strange says. Almost every time a shipment came, the two-time U.S. Open champion would take pictures of the boxes left on his front porch and tweet it out. It was his way of saying thanks to the many, many  strangers who heeded his call.  Strange and his wife Sarah actually weren’t in North Carolina when the storm hit. Six months earlier they had made plans with friends to go trout fishing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. So they “battened down the hatches,â€� Strange says, and headed west – and not too long afterward mandatory evacuation orders came for Morehead City. “It was hard to relax and enjoy yourself when you’re watching this thing bear right down on your community,â€� he says. Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, which is about 90 miles south of Morehead City, at 7:14 a.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 14. The unwelcome visitor, which had maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, lingered for days, sucking up moisture from the Atlantic Ocean and moving slowly east, causing massive flooding across the eastern part of the state even weeks later. Strange wasn’t able to get home until the following Tuesday. All the nearby airports were closed so he had to fly into Charlotte and then take a circuitous route to get home, finding back roads that would let him skirt the many flooded areas. While Strange and his wife were in Wyoming, friends sent photos of their home and it appeared to have escaped relatively unscathed. As it turned out, there was significant water damage to the ceilings and drywall. Strange knows he was lucky, though. “Two houses from me, they’ve gutted the entire house and so mattresses, their sofas, their chairs, their belongings are in a pile of rubble in front,â€� he says. “That hits home, when you don’t have a place to lay down.â€� The fury of the storm became strikingly evident the day after Strange got back from Wyoming when he ventured over to Morehead City Country Club. “There were 30-inch diameter oak trees or bigger and pine trees that were actually twisted because tornadoes coming through there,â€� Strange says. “The debris was just like a war zone. … “Mother Nature, man, she wins every time, she really does.â€� Strange and his wife eventually canceled a trip to Paris for the Ryder Cup. The 63-year-old, who played on five teams and captained the 2002 U.S. squad, says there were just too many things to take care of at his house where workmen were visiting almost daily. “You can’t go over there and enjoy yourself and be a part of something like that knowing that you have mildew growing at home,â€� he says. As he got involved in the relief effort, Strange marveled at the first responders and other volunteers who saved so many lives and are now helping to put them back together again. “It’s been so overwhelming and people forget about where do these people stay?â€� Strange says. “They’re sleeping in the fire station, on the concrete floor. They have cots put up in these kind of homes away from home, tented villages. “These people work in 19-, 20-hour days to get power on and help people and it’s been amazing.â€� Some semblance of normalcy is slowly beginning to return to the eastern part of North Carolina. But this is just the beginning. It will be months before homes are repaired and rebuilt. Although boxes occasionally still arrive, the makeshift distribution center at the Strange household is now closed. Instead, he refers people who want to help to the Red Cross and Salvation Army. When told he should be proud of what he’s done, Strange doesn’t hesitate. “I didn’t do anything,â€� he says. “I put out a tweet and people are very, very generous and I can’t thank them enough. “They’ve helped so many people. They just don’t know how much a box of supplies, how far it goes. And I think we all think the box, I just won’t do it. It’d be a box. “Well, it all helps and when you start piling them up in the church and see what they’re doing — it really makes a difference.â€�

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