In a grueling week at Muirfield Village, it feels only fitting that a playoff will determine the winner of the 2026 Memorial Tournament. J.T. Poston came into the final round with a commanding lead over the rest of the PGA Tour field, but then felt the pressure and the highly testing golf course get to him a bit. That brought Ryan Gerard, Sam Burns, Wyndham Clark and several others into the mix, and even ahead of Poston at times. But Postong fought back and birdied the 72nd hole to ultimately force a playoff with Gerard to finish off the Memorial Tournament.
Of course, when you get to a playoff on the PGA Tour, there are always questions about the format. More importantly, golf fans want to know what holes are going to played to decide the winner, no matter the format. We’ve got you covered with what you need to know.
The Memorial playoff format: What holes are played to break the tie after 72 holes?
The Memorial Tournament playoff format is a sudden-death tiebreaker, meaning that the first player to make a lower score on a single hole will be crowned the champion this week at Muirfield Village. The players will play the 18th hole repetitively until a winner is determined by a lower score on the hole. If they are tied after one playing of the 18th hole, they’ll take the golf cart back to the tee box and do it all over again, and so forth.
Interestingly enough, it was Poston who birdied the 18th hole to force the playoff, while Gerard had to make a testy par putt to stay in it.
Memorial Tournament playoff history
Because Muirfield Village is such a demanding golf course that also draws one of the best fields on the PGA Tour, it’s no surprise that also means that we’ve seen a plethora of playoffs in the Memorial Tournament over the years.
The most recent playoff in this event was just a few years ago in 2023 when Viktor Hovland and Denny McCarthy were tied after 72 holes of regulation. Hovland ultimately came out on top after a wayward tee shot from McCarthy in the playoff. That also came just two years after Patrick Cantlay bested Collin Morikawa in the 2021 Memorial Tournament for a victory.
Three years prior to that, Bryson DeChambeau found himself in a three-man playoff at Muirfield Village, facing Byeong-Hun An and Kyle Stanley after 72 holes and emerging victorious back in 2018. And two years prior to that, it was William McGirt that came out on top with a playoff win over Jon Curran. There were also playoffs in the two years prior, with David Lingmerth topping Justin Rose in 2015 and Hideki Matsuyama outlasting Kevin Na in 2014.
All told, the 2026 playoff between Poston and Gerard is the seventh playoff at the Memorial in the last 13 years of this tournament. That’s over half of the events that have ended in a playoff over that span, which means that you can count on high drama more often than not when it comes to the Memorial Tournament.
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