By: @Ryan_Humphries on Twitter & LineStar Chat

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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. For the second year in a row, the API will garner “Signature Event” status, which means the field will feature a smaller, but highly talented, group of players who will be chasing after an increased prize pool and additional FedEx Cup points.

Within this 69-player field, 44 of the top 50 ranked players in the world will be teeing it up. There will still be a nontraditional 36-hole cut coming after Friday’s round where the top 50 players (and/or any player within 10 strokes of the lead) on the leaderboard (including ties) will advance into the weekend With that said, do keep in mind that nearly three-fourths of the field is guaranteed to make it past the cut line. That allows for more aggressive lineup builds in tournaments featuring multiple studs in the same lineup. 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 | 7,466 Yards

Greens: Bermuda

Course Type: Parkland

Course Difficulty Last 5 Years: 6th, 4th, 9th, 1st, 9th

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

The iconic Bay Hill sets up as a Par 72 and measures in at 7,466 yards. Due to its extreme length and mix of course defenses, it routinely plays as the most difficult Par 72 year in and year out. 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 Tour 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. Of course, the smaller field at this year’s API will drastically decrease the total amount of water balls, but the point remains that plenty of shots will be going for a swim this week. Due to the length of this course, over a third of approach shots will come from 200+ yards out so players who hit their 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 will be a necessity. 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 not been lower than 12-under for five consecutive years and it has ranked among the top 10 most difficult courses played on the PGA Tour in each of those five seasons. Two years ago, 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 ranking 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. Unpolished and errant play at Bay Hill can and will be severely punished and result in a quick skid 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, there will be times this week when problematic winds will come into play, primarily during Saturday’s round and parts of Sunday. 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 images above to view the most up-to-date forecast)

Thursday: Ideal conditions all day. Pleasant temps in the 60s/70s, mostly sunny skies, and winds will rarely exceed far beyond 5 mph.

Friday: Sustained winds should stay in the single digits, however, morning gusts could get upwards of 15-20 mph.

Weekend: The windiest round of the week looks to arrive on Saturday when wind speeds will reach 15 mph sustained around midday and into the afternoon with 20+ mph gusts expected throughout the day. Sunday morning will start off similarly but less windy overall than Saturday.

⚖️Weather Verdict: There isn’t a huge weather edge to be had this week, but the AM/PM wave may benefit overall since they’ll avoid those Friday morning wind gusts.

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

API DFS 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 factors like course history, recent form, recent average fantasy scoring results, and odds to win.

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

API DFS Cheat Sheet📑

Click the Cheat Sheet above for the higher-quality 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.