Bay Hill Club and Lodge is a challenging course that tends to separate the wheat from the chaff and produce deserving winners.
Tiger Woods won eight times at the course, after all, and champions from the past 10 years include Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy and Australia’s Jason Day.
The Arnold Palmer Invitational will test an elite field that includes the top 10 players in the world rankings when the PGA Tour’s latest signature event tees off Thursday in Orlando, Fla.
Scheffler won the red cardigan in memory of Arnold Palmer in 2022 and 2024. He also placed fourth in 2023 and “settled” for a tie for 11th place last season, a shortcoming by his standards.
“I think there’s definitely a special aspect to it,” Scheffler said of winning events that honor the greats of the game. “When you look at a tournament like this, you think about Mr. Palmer’s legacy, not only what he meant to the game, but all the things he did in his community here and in Pennsylvania as well, and also what they did for the game of golf. So there’s always some special meaning with those.”
Scheffler won The American Express in his season debut, but since then he’s gotten off to slow starts — shooting 73 at the Phoenix Open, 72 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and 74 at the Genesis Invitational before recovering to a solid finish each time.
It’s a notable subplot early in the PGA Tour season, but nothing weighing too much on Scheffler’s mind.
“Last year on tour I led the tour in first round, second round, third round and fourth round scoring,” he said. “So I’m not too concerned over a very small sample size.”
Russell Henley, the current World No. 7, added his name to the list of Bay Hill champions last year when he edged Collin Morikawa by one stroke, thanks in part to a chip-in eagle on the 16th hole Sunday.
“Like I said last year, I watched this tournament since I was a little kid, and to see all the amazing finishes coming down 18, and to do that and to play well under pressure and win this tournament, it’s just a dream come true,” Henley said. “It’s still kind of crazy to think that I did that.”
Last week on tour, Irishman Shane Lowry fumbled away a chance to win the Cognizant Classic when he double-bogeyed the 16th and 17th holes, handing the win to Nico Echavarria of Colombia.
Lowry is in the field this week to play his fourth event in a row, and he’s heard encouraging words from one of his closest friends in golf.
“I played golf with him on Monday morning. He was fine. He was in good spirits,” McIlroy said. “I reminded him, I double-bogeyed the 16th at PGA National in 2014 to lose the tournament. And I went on to win two majors that year. So I was trying to (say), ‘Look, it’s one event, it was two bad holes, two bad swings. It doesn’t mean that the rest of the year’s going to be bad.'”
Finally, the player everyone will be watching is Justin Thomas, who will make his first start on tour since undergoing back surgery in November.
“I do,” Thomas said when asked if he feels 100%. “Yeah, I’m not necessarily going out and doing any, you know, two-hour long driver sessions by any means — but I didn’t really want to do that before I had surgery, so I definitely don’t now.”
