The Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill – 2024 Preview

The PGA Tour moves to the second event of the “Florida Swing” with this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando, Florida. Having hosted this event since 1979, it is one of the most respected courses in the Sunshine State. “Arnie’s Tournament” is a limited-field, “Signature” event played on one of the PGA Tour’s most demanding layouts.

Bay Hill is a classical Florida-style golf course characterized by its length, Bermuda grass, thick rough, firm, and fast greens, and numerous bunkers and water hazards. With windy conditions playing a factor, five of the last six winners have finished with a score of 12-under or worse. Similar to the last two events at Riviera and PGA National, par is an acceptable score on a majority of holes on a layout that plays as the sternest non-major test of golf on the PGA Tour.

“Tough”, “can’t fake it”, and “mentally challenging” are all phrases players themselves have used to describe Bay Hill. Course knowledge, total driving skills, long-iron accuracy, high ball flight into firm greens, and being able to scramble in thicker rough are all important qualities for success here. Justin Rose summed it up best by saying, “There’s really no way to fake it around Bay Hill. The rough’s pretty thick. Generally, the greens are quite firm which requires pinpoint iron shots. There’s enough trouble out there that mentally it’s a challenge. You have to really commit to shots.”

The Field

We are only two months into the calendar year and this is already the fourth Signature event. The top two players in the world, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy lead the way with McIlroy having perhaps the best course history of anyone at Bay Hill with eight top-13s in his nine career starts here. As one of the most predictive “course history” tracks on Tour, numerous players can boast stellar past performances here including Matt Fitzpatrick (six top-13s), Sungjae Im (five top-21s), and Chris Kirk (six top-16s).

54 of the top 55 eligible players in the world are committed, with Tony FInau being the only exception. The field is currently set at 69 golfers with the cut set at the low 50 and ties, or anyone within 10 shots of the lead.

Bay Hill Club & Lodge – History

Originally the home of an orange grove, and only a few miles southwest of downtown Orlando, a group of investors from Nashville appointed architect Dick Wilson to design the course which opened for play in 1961. Wilson designed two nine-hole tracks, the Champion and Challenger courses. It was the first course in the world to be seeded with Tifway Bermuda grass.

When the owners of the course invited Arnold Palmer to play in an exhibition match to promote the club in 1965, Palmer fell in love with the property. He won the charity event that week and allegedly went home and told his wife Winnie that he wanted to buy the course. Palmer loved the property so much that in 1976 he officially bought the entire property and it remained his winter home until he passed away in 2016. In 1979, the Florida Citrus Open moved across town to Bay Hill, and the current PGA Tour event that we now call “The Bayhill Invitational” was born.

In the decades after buying the course, Palmer and his business partner Ed Seay gradually altered Wilson’s original design. In 2009, Palmer put Bay Hill through its largest renovation yet. Palmer made the course tougher and more like Augusta National. In his own words, he explained: “I’ve introduced firm, fast playing conditions on slopes around greens that run away from the pins. This will take the ball further away from the intended target instead of stopping it like the previous heavy rough did.” After a four-month redesign, Bay Hill also had newly positioned bunkers, re-grassed greens with flatter edges for more pin positions, and new tees which stretched Bay Hill to its current yardage of 7,466.

After the new superintendent, Chris Flynn took over, Bay Hill received a minor facelift in 2015. Fairways were widened and tree numbers were reduced, making the off-the-tee game somewhat easier. On the flip side, the course did get tougher because Flynn shaved off a great deal of rough surrounding the water and bunkers, making it far easier for balls to roll into hazards in the typical firm and fast conditions.

The last big change to the course happened two years ago. Players arrived at Bay Hill and were surprised by the sight. Most of the sloping run-off areas from around the greens had been replaced with thick three-inch rough. Rory McIlroy was disappointed with the development saying, “Historically, it’s been you’d miss a green and the ball would run off and you’d still have the chip off short grass, for example, and now that’s all been filled in with rough. There’s just so many areas that there were runoffs and sort of tight areas, which I think lends itself to the better chippers of the golf ball, and that’s been sort of taken away this year.”

Seven different holes were affected by this alteration which now allows players to be more aggressive in firing at pins knowing that if they miss on approach, the rough will stop the ball and they will have a much more predictable chip shot. Viktor Hovland is a player that comes to mind as someone who may have benefitted from this change. A notorious poor chipper of the ball in his first couple of years on Tour, Hovland finished in second place in 2022 and in tenth place last year after finishing 49th, 42nd and 40th in his three prior appearances.

McIlroy finished his comments on the matter by confirming how much easier around-the-green play now is at Bay Hill. “I prefer the runoffs,” McIlroy said. “I think it separates the good chippers from the bad chippers. I feel like, when you miss a green when the rough is like this, you know, it’s half skill, half guesswork and luck. Whenever you miss greens and there’s runoffs and it gives you options, I think that’s where the guys with the better short games separate themselves, so that’s why I like runoffs. I like that style. You basically miss a green, and you’ve pretty much got just blast it out and try to hole the putt.”

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Finish Position and Strokes Gained Course History (2016-2023)

This includes the average finish position and Strokes Gained per round since 2016 for each of the categories. Players are sorted by SG: Total. Bay Hill is the third-most (out of 44) predictive annual course on Tour.