For some golfers defending titles is a rare privilege, but for Scottie Scheffler it will feel strange not to by the end of 2025. This week's Arnold Palmer Invitational will be the first of seven such opportunities between March and August and it might be the most important as it provides something of a dress rehearsal for the Masters. Scheffler has won both of these tournaments twice, in 2022 and 2024, but couldn't quite defend in-between.
When you're as good as Scheffler, as so few golfers in the entire history of the sport have been, there's not really a golf course that doesn't suit. We saw at Pinehurst and we've seen in Open Championships that anything which does unpredictable things to his most predictable shots is bound to work against him, but if he played the 2024 US Open again this week, he'd be the right favourite, and he's still the right favourite for the Open this summer.
But there are things about both Bay Hill and Augusta National, and Sawgrass for that matter, which make him particularly well-suited to the biggest events of spring. Bay Hill is a stock par 72 on the scorecard, not extraordinarily long by today's standards, but it's a really demanding test of a player's long-game. Thick rough levels the playing field around the greens and it's being able to control those approaches and avoid that randomness which is key, something he does by being both an excellent driver and the single best iron player in the sport.
I was a little annoyed not to have chanced him despite a lack of Torrey Pines experience when placed last time and we do have to suffer with the price after that top-five performance, but he's far more familiar with Bay Hill and had five good efforts here in six before its status was elevated.
One of those was third place in 2019 when a top-class tee-to-green display arguably ought to have seen him win his first PGA Tour title and who knows where we'd be now had he done so, given that he's still waiting to shake the monkey off his back.
Seeing Thomas Detry do so can only help in that regard and two more maidens have won since to emphasise how slim the margin is between success and perceived failure. Fleetwood certainly hasn't benefited from the sort of bounce which saw Brian Campbell get off the mark two weeks ago.
I make him the most reliable option (not to be confused with most likely winner) in the field outside the front two, with his iron play arguably never better than it is today. All told 11 of his 12 appearances since last summer's Open have been high-class from a tee-to-green perspective and his putter has improved throughout all three starts this year, with his finishing positions reading 21-22-5.
Big, championship courses like this one, where patience is key, are always a plus for Fleetwood and so is the forecast, with that wind if anything likely to help. Indeed the aforementioned 2019 edition, where he produced his best golf here so far, was played in a stiff breeze.
He's a certified fan of the course and he looks great in a cardigan, so maybe this is the week at last.
The forecast and the fact we're in Florida are both also in SHANE LOWRY's favour and again, while it's fair to say he's not won as often as we'd all perhaps like, any such concerns should be in part negated by betting without the big two if you're able to do so.
Lowry's parallels with close friend Fleetwood extend to the fact that he too has been outstanding from tee-to-green for many months now, gaining strokes in all bar one of his 31 measured starts dating back to the beginning of 2024.
That's remarkable consistency even for a player of Lowry's class and having ranked second when finally cracking this course last season, enough for third place overall, he too looks very likely to give his running.
Lowry actually putted fine that week, as he did here in 2023, and his overall Florida record is enormously positive. He said himself that it took time to figure things out here, particularly the bermuda grass, but in 12 starts over the last four years he has nine top-20s, four top-fives, and several close calls. This is his part-time home and it's shown.
Firstly, he's putted on bermuda twice this year and they've been his two best performances with that club: 25th and 17th in Hawaii. Secondly, he's gained strokes putting on his last four Bay Hill starts, despite on each occasion arriving here on a run of bad putting, sometimes bordering on hopeless.
If the Ryder Cup captain can again come alive on bermuda, which he's now so well-accustomed to having made his home in Jupiter, then I see no reason why he can't contend at a course he's always loved. Bradley was third in 2013, runner-up a year later, halfway leader in 2019 and, prior to finishing mid-pack last year, had finished 10th, 11th and 10th in the three previous renewals.
Hovland's struggles are very well documented by now but it should be said he still almost won a major and a FedEx Cup Playoff event last year, one in Kentucky and the other in Tennessee.
He once said he wasn't keen on Florida golf in terms of the visuals and the grasses but eventually overcame that feeling to finish second here in 2022, when a tad unfortunate, and then 10th a year later when a third-round 66 catapulted him into contention.
This is a bit of a shot in the dark on a player who has been wandering alone there for far too long. Maybe Bay Hill will bring him back into the light.
In contrast to Hovland, Min Woo Lee's silky short-game might not be seen to best effect here but he can do better than he has in the past and is respected along with Wyndham Clark, who went 2-2 over this fortnight last year.
Those two complete the shortlist but Scheffler of course went 1-1 to Clark's 2-2, and the prospect of a hat-trick in this event is dauntingly strong. As ever in these Signature Events, we have to have our eyes open to that.
Posted at 1100 GMT on 04/03/25
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