Rain at Muirfield has been par for the course since 1977, including Friday’s second round, when there was a one-hour stoppage around 5 p.m. Rain delays have occurred in at least 28 of the past 43 years.
The final rounds have especially been impacted, with Mother Nature sending rain to central Ohio up to 70 percent of the time, usually in the form of downpours. Fortunately, this year we escaped with mere sprinkles this weekend, even as storms fired up east of I-71, bringing hard rain and thunder Sunday afternoon not too far from the tournament.
Some have referred to the frequency of rain as the so-called “curse” of Chief Leatherlips, who was buried along the banks of the Scioto River, near Riverside Drive. This is where Chief Leatherlips was put to death in 1810 by a half dozen rival members of his Wyandot tribe.
Jim Thompson’s great-great-grandfather Joseph, who died in 1862, was the caretaker for Chief Leatherlips’ grave. A monument built in 1889 marks the site near an ancient burr oak tree, where the chief was killed.
Thompson, a Dublin historian, places a flower at the gravesite every year, and believes Chief Leatherlips was a local hero. The Wyandot chief had formed a personal relationship with the five Sells brothers in Dublin and was widely respected as a neighbor and friend.
Thompson posits that one of the reasons he was executed was because he did not want to side against the Americans on the eve of the War of 1812.
He said that the name Leatherlips translated to “never told a lie,” adding, “Sometime back in the 1850s, this hatchet was given to my great-great-grandfather by some of the last Wyandots to live in these woods.”
Legend has it that the chief’s restless spirit is not happy about the location of a golf course near his home hunting grounds .
However, rain around the time of the Memorial Tournament may be nothing more than water over the dam. An examination of the data reveal that the period between the middle of May and early June is the rainiest part of the year locally.
Rain has fallen on six out of every 10 tournament days, perhaps one or two more days than you would expect by simple statistics.
Yet the chances of getting through four consecutive days without rain in central Ohio at this time of year are probabilistically that much slimmer, resulting in inevitable delays, and the perpetuation of the folklore.