By: @Ryan_Humphries on Twitter & LineStar Chat

Tournament & Field 🏆

The PGA Tour heads into the second week of the Florida swing as golfers travel out to Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, Florida to tee it up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. This event draws a strong field annually with many of the world’s best golfers coming out to honor one of the game’s all-time greats. However, with THE PLAYERS Championship, aka the tournament which carries the largest purse in golf at $25MM, only a week away, plenty of the top players are also electing to take this week off. But the API’s $20MM purse is nothing to sneeze at and this still stands out as one of the more talented fields you will see in a regular season event, outside of Majors and WGC tournaments.

In total, 23 of the top 25, and 67 of the top 100 ranked golfers in the world are on-site at Bay Hill this week. Since the API carries invitational status, the size of the field is a bit smaller than usual with only 120 players in attendance. The usual 36-hole cut rule is still in effect so the top 65 golfers (including ties) on the leaderboard after two rounds will move on to play the weekend. With that said, do keep in mind that over half of the field will be making it past the cut line. Normally, that allows for more aggressive lineup builds in tournaments. Given the fairly soft pricing with many highly skilled golfers carrying more affordable salaries, a more balanced approach is firmly in play as well, especially for cash builds.

The Course Preview ⛳

Bay Hill Club & Lodge

Par 72 | 7,454 Yards

Greens: Bermuda

Course Type: Parkland

Course Difficulty Last 5 Years: 4th, 9th, 1st, 9th, 15th

Cut Line Last 5 Years: +3, +2, +3, +1, +1

The iconic Bay Hill sets up as a Par 72 and measures in at 7,454 yards. It’s a course where elite ball strikers reign supreme and it will actually play longer than its scorecard length in large part due to the threat of water hazards as well as several doglegged holes. Water comes into play on eight of the holes and there are 84 bunkers to navigate around. With numerous water hazards and some thick rough in play, Bay Hill demands a ton of respect off of the tee and, despite the fairly wide tree-lined fairways, you will see many golfers elect to play “less than driver” on certain holes where hazards are more prevalent. The average driving distance at Bay Hill over the last five years has only been about 280 yards which is notably short by PGA standards. Similar to last week, there will be a considerable amount of golf balls that will end up finding the drink – usually, around 200 or so shots end up in the water at Bay Hill each year which can lead to some ugly numbers on the scorecard. Due to the length of this course, over a third of approach shots will come from 200+ yards out so players who hit the long irons well will fare better than those who struggle from distance. On approach shots, golfers will be targeting average-sized Bermuda grass greens. These greens should run fast (about 12.5 on the stimpmeter) – some green complexes are elevated and most will feature plenty of slope, undulation, and runoff areas on the perimeter.

Nearly half of all birdies made at Bay Hill come on the four Par 5 holes, so players who can take advantage of those scoring opportunities must fall within consideration. It seems quite obvious, but if golfers fail to score well on the Par 5s, they won’t be anywhere near contention come Sunday. Tiger Woods, an eight-time winner of this event, has stated that his approach to success here was by “playing for par on most of the holes and being aggressive on the Par 5s to score.” Seems simple enough, right? Patience, creativity, and the ability to simply grind are the major intangible keys to success at Bay Hill.

The winning score at the API has landed between 11-under and 19-under in eight of the last ten years. Last season, Scottie Scheffler won with a score of just 5-under when Bay Hill ended up playing as the 4th most difficult course throughout the entire season. 2020 was the other noticeable outlier when Tyrrell Hatton won with another modest score of 4-under and Bay Hill ended up as THE most difficult course played across the 2019-20 PGA Tour season. Make no mistake, even in ideal conditions, Bay Hill can be an incredibly challenging track to contend with and it has ranked among the top 10 most difficult courses played on the PGA Tour in each of the last four seasons. Unpolished and errant play at Bay Hill can be severely punished and result in a quick slide down the leaderboard. As with any course, especially down in Florida, wind can add an extra layer of difficulty to scoring conditions. After looking at the early forecast (as of Tuesday evening), there will be times this week when problematic winds will come into play, primarily during the Friday and Saturday rounds. I’ll be factoring course history a bit more into my decision-making this week, as guys tend to either play well here pretty consistently, or they don’t – there is not much in between. This should be another fun tournament so let’s dive right in! Best of luck!

Weather & Tee Times ⛅

(Click the image above to view the most up-to-date forecast)

Thursday: Some notable winds (10 mph sustained, 15 mph gusts) will come into play around midday but nothing overly worrisome.

Friday: Here is where things will get dicey. Sustained winds begin at around 10 mph in the morning but will quickly pick up closer to 20 mph around mid-morning and persist into the late afternoon. Gusts are expected to reach around 30 mph throughout the day.

Weekend: Saturday will also bring some windy conditions but not quite as intense as Friday’s round. Golfers can expect to compete against ~15 mph sustained winds with ~20 mph gusts. Sunday’s final round sets up as the calmest round of the week with <10 mph winds throughout the day.

⚖️Weather Verdict: I’d say this is definitely a week where you’ll want to run a final weather check on Wednesday night in case there are any significant changes -- especially for the Friday forecast. As of now, for the most part, every golfer is going to get a dose of some problematic wind conditions -- again, primarily on Friday. The golfers with very early Friday tee times may end up having a bit of an advantage if the sustained winds stick to around 10 mph for most of their round, but there are still 30+ mph gusts expected in the early A.M. as well. For now, I won’t give either wave a significant weather advantage but that could change once we get closer to Thursday/Friday.

Arnold Palmer Invitational Tee Times

Key Stats to Consider 📊

1. Strokes Gained: Ball Striking (SG: OTT + SG: App) | 35%

2. Par 5 Birdie or Better Percentage | 20%

3. Par 4 Average | 15%

4. Bogey Avoidance | 15%

5. Proximity from 200+ Yards | 10%

6. Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermuda) | 5%

PGA Tour Stats Page

Arnold Palmer Invitational Model Standouts 🏅

Below are the top 20 ranked golfers in both my overall model and my key stats model. Below that are the top 20 leaders in average fantasy points over the last five and last ten starts. The players ranked on these lists do not necessarily mean they are the top golfers I’m targeting for this week's event, but many of these guys should no doubt be favorable DFS options.

Overall Model Rank: A golfer’s ranking (within the current field) in my personal DFS model, which weighs all of the key stats listed above in this newsletter, as well as things like course history, recent form, recent average fantasy scoring results, and odds to win.

Key Stat Rank: Provides a golfer’s overall rank (in relation to the field) in my "key stats only" model, which considers only the key stats listed above in this newsletter with the specified percentage weights allocated towards each statistic.

Arnold Palmer Invitational PGA DFS Cheat Sheet 📑

Click the Cheat Sheet above for the direct image link

Alternative Cheat Sheet Direct Image Link

Cheat Sheet QR Code:

That will do it for our PGA preview! Best of luck this week and, once again, feel free to hit me up in the LineStar chat or on Twitter @Ryan_Humphries with any questions.