Bay Hill currently measures 7,419 yards for a par 72. Unlike, PGA National last week, Bay Hill isnt a complete second-shot course. All four Par 3s, all four Par 5s and a few Par 4s will likely require a long iron this week at Bay Hill. Just because you know what to do doesnt make it an easy task. Zalatoris was sidelined due to injury for the latter part of 2022, but he placed in a tie for fourth last month at Riviera, and that clearly shows he is back in business. Patrick Cantlay : Cantlay quickly brushed off his surprising struggles in Phoenix with a 3rd at Riviera. Lets get down to the top 10 players to get it done at PGA National: Min Woo Lee, 150th Open Championship, St. Andrews, Mandatory Credit: Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Sports. Bermuda grass is where he tends to thrive. Copyright 2023 PGA TOUR, Inc. All rights reserved. 1 Rory McIlroy leads a WM Phoenix Open field that features 22 of the world's top 25 golfers. Jon Rahm : Rahms numbers in the model this week are just absurd, and hes a runaway No. An entertaining run on the west coast headlined the PGA Tour during the January and February months, but now the golfers have headed east with the Masters on the horizon in early April. Each week in our golf power rankings, we will highlight the top players on the PGA TOUR in order of likeliness to win the tournament. Bay Hill has been a stock par 72 since 2010. FREE Picks Contest For the Arnold Palmer Invitational: Win An Amazon Gift Card Instantly! *: Power Rankings (Puerto Rico), Sleepers (API), Payouts and Points (API), Payouts and Points (Puerto Rico), Medical Extensions, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Of course, he remains indefinitely beholden to when his extended recovery will allow him to play in accordance with a chosen schedule. Will likely be excited to get back on Bermuda. After winning for the first time in four years at the Zozo Championship in October, he has piled up three other top-25s at the CJ Cup at South Carolina, Farmers Insurance Open (runner-up) and Phoenix Open. Trusting that greens will be adjusted accordingly, its a plan that likely will extend into Saturdays third round for which the elements will mimic the opener, albeit with a slight risk of inclement weather. Viktor Hovland : Hovlands short game continues to let him down as he struggles to get much going since his run at The Open at St. Andrews. Brett White's wife, Natalie, was emotional watching her husband make his TOUR debut @WMPhoenixOpen. Going into Round 3 . He finished in a tie for third at 15-under. Only 10 players broke par for 72 holes. Finau has (barely) cooled off from his sizzling stretch last season, in which he won in back-to-back starts and was ninth at the Tour Championship. He carded an 8-under 63 in the second round, the lowest round of the tournament, and hit all 18 greens in regulation, which he had done only one other time in 843 official rounds on tour. The course measures 7,261 yards for a par 70. 18. Over his past six starts, Hoge finished tied for fourth, missed cut, solo second, missed cut, first and a tie for 14th. The good news is that the worst of the wind in early forecasting is moderate and kicking up only on Thursday and Sunday. Rather, its one of those tracks that players will say is all out in front of you. That means its all about executing. He took T-2nd at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship where he was just a shot behind Victor Perez. The next step in Lees young career is playing well on the PGA Tour. It could get windy but doesnt look like it will be too out of control. 15 and 17 annually are among the most challenging as a set on TOUR, a fact due to sustained breezes from a southeasterly direction. pic.twitter.com/xwhDvl8Wrn, "The best bunker shot Jordan has ever hit. The tee-to-green play was still there, and now the World No. Kevin Yu and Joseph Bramlett both finished T7 at Pebble and didnt get into the WM as predicted, but only Bramlett is committed to the Honda (as of Monday). He is skipping the Genesis Invitational after missing the cut in his last two starts at Riviera. Those rarities occurred in the third round (69.85) in 2014 and the second round (69.61) in 2017. What weve seen more often that not lately is Bermuda history continues to very relevant on Florida courses. In addition to fully exempt status in the winners category through 2025, the champion will earn exemptions into THE PLAYERS Championship next week, the PGA Championship in May and the Sentry Tournament of Champions in 2024. 3. Skip to main content Skip to navigation > Arnold Palmer Invitational pres. "High praise from Michael Greller on @JordanSpieth's ridiculous shot on 17 @WMPhoenixOpen. Unlike last week, none of the top-10 golfers in the world are in attendance this week; only 12 of the top-50 in the world are making their way to PGA National for The Honda Classic. He was unable to earn his card through Korn Ferry Tour Finals last year, but he can redeem himself by going low at PGA National. So, the test still tips at 7,125 yards, the tallest of the overseeded rough might not reach three inches and the TifEagle bermuda greens will run 12 feet on the Stimpmeter. Jon Rahm Rahm is followed by Rory McIlroy (+900), Scottie Scheffler (+1000) and a large group at +2000 that is headlined by Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa. Ranks 1st in Proximity: 200+ Yards and 4th in the model. There may not be a man in golf Id rather have standing over the ball in high winds. Previous rank: 15 Brooks Koepka Previous rank: 11 1, a loaded LPGA field and more to watch in golf this week, Here's everything you missed this week in professional golf, Jin Young Ko up by 2 in Singapore title defense, Quigley fires 65 for early lead in PGA Champions, Kitayama handles windy Bay Hill as Rahm falters, Tiger not part of field for next week's Players, Young stretches lead to 4 in Puerto Rico Open, Rahm stays hot, finishes strong for Bay Hill lead, Rookie Young captures Puerto Rico lead with 63. Previous rank: 25 PGA TOUR, PGA TOUR Champions, and the Swinging Golfer design are registered trademarks. Because it can stretch to 7,466 yards and winds often punish, muscle almost always has contributed to the profile of the champion. 6. Beau Hossler getting the "royal treatment" at the 2022 @WMPhoenixOpen pic.twitter.com/WCcbmi60xU, Before the sun was even up, fans made a mad dash to get a good spot at the 16th Hole at the Waste Management Phoenix Open on Saturday. The cutline has been over par in 10 of the last 11 years. They took their cuts and delivered. 16. After missing the cut in three of his past four tour starts, Koepka finally showed a pulse and was in contention to win his third WM Phoenix Open title. Ranks 1st in SG: Par 5, 2nd in SG: APP and 2nd in the model. 1, LIV Golf's debut on The CW scores low ratings, How to watch PGA Tour's Arnold Palmer Invitational on ESPN+, Kirk wins Honda in playoff; 1st title since 2015, Howell (63) wins in Mexico for 1st title in LIV, Nicklaus: '24 schedule likely to aid Honda field, Siem ends 8-year wait for another Euro Tour title, Vu overcomes 6-shot deficit to win 1st LPGA title, Scheffler repeats at Phoenix Open, back to No. How Arnold Palmers Bay Hill Club & Lodge will present itself, what Mother Nature has planned and more can be found below. * - Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COMs Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday. Just a friendly reminder that these aren't necessarily the 25 most talented players in . Last week at PGA National gave us a fun week considering the lack of star power in the field. 1. Hovland was one of the best iron players on tour last season; he was first in approach shots from 200 to 225 yards, second from 125 to 150, and third from 175 to 200. PGATOUR.coms Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous perspectives. As one of three invitationals on Tour, its an invite-only field of 120 players and provides automatic three-year exemption status to the winner of the event instead of the standard two years. He briefly challenged Rahm on Sunday, and he was playing some of the best golf in the world to end his 2022. 24. Notice the amount of green AM tee times. Like Deion Sanders, Rickie Fowler is coming. Its one of seven cuts made in 2022-23. How Arnold Palmers Bay Hill Club & Lodge will present itself, what Mother Nature has planned and more can be found below. Because it can stretch to 7,466 yards and winds often punish, muscle almost always has contributed to the profile of the champion. Its fun to watch the games best have to struggle to make par and be tested on a tough layout. Finished 5th here last year. He's 13th strokes gained: total and has putted well this season. Spieth followed up his near-miss at Pebble Beach with a rather ordinary start at TPC Scottsdale, a tie for 60th at even par. The former Wake Forest University star has gained strokes on the greens in all four of his starts in 2023, which is an encouraging trend for a player who had previously struggled with that part of his game. pic.twitter.com/RQMtrMLJ8D. Sam Burns, Arnold Palmer Invitational, Mandatory Credit: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports. Brutally difficult conditions led to Scottie Scheffler persevering to win at 5-under last year. Rickie Fowler. MJ Daffue The first-time PGA TOUR member finally connected for his first top 25 of the season at The Honda Classic. Thomas, the reigning PGA Championship winner, still seemed to be dialing things in heading into Phoenix. On the heels of last weeks Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, the tour takes its talents to Orlandos Bay Hill Club & Lodge for the Arnold Palmer Invitational that begins on Thursday and wraps up on Sunday. These Bermuda greens are fast and pure, and the winner here tends to have a really strong week with the flat stick. He tied for 45th at the Saudi International. Bay Hill already is one of if not the hardest par 72 in a non-major in every season last years scoring average of 73.886 easily set the mark among its peers but consider that, in relatively docile conditions a year ago, the opening-round scoring average still was 72.292! The reigning U.S. Open winner has only four PGA Tour starts this season; his best finish was a tie for seventh at the Tournament of Champions. 23. When he competed here last year, it was via Past Champion status and he was 1,030th in the Official World Golf Ranking. Keegan Bradley : I always think of Bradley when I hear about potentially brutal conditions on a course. Viktor Hovland Previous rank: 16 He was 120th in shots gained: approach going into the WM Phoenix Open. pic.twitter.com/U4xDqJhNHs. The positive is that Thomas rarely chains together poor ball striking, and he did putt well at Genesis. *: Power Rankings (Puerto Rico), Sleepers (API), Payouts and Points (API), Payouts and Points (Puerto Rico), Medical Extensions, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. 1, a loaded LPGA field and more to watch in golf this week, Here's everything you missed this week in professional golf, Jin Young Ko up by 2 in Singapore title defense, Quigley fires 65 for early lead in PGA Champions, Kitayama handles windy Bay Hill as Rahm falters, Tiger not part of field for next week's Players, Young stretches lead to 4 in Puerto Rico Open, Rahm stays hot, finishes strong for Bay Hill lead, Rookie Young captures Puerto Rico lead with 63. Still, the last two winners of Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau make it clear that elite drivers win around here. 1 in the world after tying for 10th at TPC Scottsdale, his fourth top-15 in as many PGA Tour starts in 2022. In 2022, Lee struggled early on with one top-10 in his first 20 starts. 14. Ranks 7th in SG: OTT and 7th in SG: APP. Impressive stuff. Tyrrell Hatton : With some solid form building and a trip back to Florida, Hatton has to be in good spirits going to Bay Hill. With that being said, it seems that distance may be becoming less important since some changes from the Bay Hill superintendent that have opened the course up more and made the fairway width closer to average. The Australian took the week off after tying for 28th in last week's Saudi International. He won the Fortinet Championship in September and then cooled off. Hes proof of the value of a home game. Spieth bounced back from disappointing back-to-back starts-he missed the cut at the Sony Open and tied for 63rd at Pebble Beach-to finish tied for sixth at TPC Scottsdale. * - Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COMs Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday. Tiger Woods, who is not in the field this year, has won Arnold Palmers event a whopping eight times. Now, he has already won twice on the PGA Tour and is one of the more popular players. Previous rank: 2 Look for his following contributions as scheduled. That elevated status brings a purse of $20 million. Zalatoris didn't play in Phoenix after he was forced to pull out of the AT&T Pebble Pro-Am a week earlier after testing positive for COVID-19. Hideki Matsuyama He had three victories in his previous eight worldwide starts. Ranks 17th in the model. 21+: TheLines.com and all content herein is intended for audiences 21 years and older. Marc Leishman Jason Day : Day now has one finish worse than 21st in his last 10 starts, and hes tallied four Top 10s in that stretch. He has 10 top-10s in 14 starts there, including a victory in 2020. Day had just two top-10s and five top-25s in 19 starts last season. Brutally difficult conditions led to Scottie Scheffler persevering to win at 5-under last year. The driver has been very consistent lately, so hell just need a colder than usual putter to get rolling. Hovland won the Hero World Challenge, an unofficial event that Woods hosted in the Bahamas in December, but he hasn't done anything spectacular in official tournaments so far in 2023. There are designated events, and then there is the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. 13. Daytime temperatures will eclipse 80 degrees and the threat for rain is relegated to a passing shower at worst. Sam Burns Kevin Yu and Joseph Bramlett both finished T7 at Pebble and didnt get into the WM as predicted, but only Bramlett is committed to the Honda (as of Monday). Access 4,300-plus hours of live coverage from 35 PGA Tour tournaments each year, including four days of coverage at 28 events with four feeds each day. Each week in our golf power rankings, we will highlight the top players on the PGA TOUR in order of likeliness to win the tournament. 10. Morikawa is back from the Middle East and is scheduled to play at Riviera Country Club, which will be his first start on the U.S. mainland since a runner-up at The CJ Cup at Summit in mid-October. 7. pic.twitter.com/0TL3TH7DyA, Scottie Scheffler couldn't believe it.Neither could this fan pic.twitter.com/YpzqEDCBkx, What happens when a fan catches your golf ball? The goal will be to hit shorter irons into challenging targets with invisible forces poised to smack even properly executed strikes out of the sky. 3 will tee it up at a place hes won at and has finished worse than 13th just once in eight tries. The Korn Ferry trademark is also a registered trademark, and is used in the Korn Ferry Tour logo with permission. Im taking a small look at SG: Tee-to-Green in very high winds to get a grasp on who will be able to navigate Bay Hill in the worst of conditions this week. This is the fourth designated event of the season. Ranking Four World Championship Tournaments, The Aussie and brother to LPGA star Minjee Lee. It's officially a designated event in 2023, but you don't need to conceive a visual of the King himself winking, grinning and giving a thumbs-up to approve what we already know, that this. PGA Tour Power Rankings: 2016 Honda Classic 1. Ranks 2nd in High Winds, 11th in SG: OTT and 12th in SG: APP. Make no mistake, however, par still remains a terrific score on the course. One of those was at Bay Hill in 2021, and hes been solid here in three starts. Weve seen some tougher courses for Par 5 scoring as of late, but Bay Hill is a place where you really want to get your birdies on those four holes and survive for the rest of the round. Copyright 2023 PGA TOUR, Inc. All rights reserved. 1 for more than another dozen years to catch Woods' record total of 679 weeks ranked atop the Official World Golf Ranking. Will Zalatoris Hell bank 300 FedExCup points and $684,000 of a record prize fund of $3.8 million. Things are about to get good on the PGA Tour. He hit the ball well last year, gaining nearly 2 strokes per round tee-to-green on the field, but his putting was dreadful, which is why he finished in a tie for 43rd. Who's out: Bryson DeChambeau, Tyrrell Hatton, Just missed the cut: DeChambeau, Hatton, Adam Hadwin, Corey Conners, Russell Henley, Brian Harman, Abraham Ancer, Louis Oosthuizen, Harris English, Patrick Reed, Webb Simpson, Matthew Wolff, PGA Tour Power Rankings: Time to make a change at the top, A battle for No. His strength is on approach and, given his roots, also confidence when the wind blows. The PGA Tour's Florida Swing kicks off this week in Palm Beach Gardens when the 2023 Honda Classic tees off at PGA National. Itd be dumb to ignore him at a course that requires elite driving, and he gained 4.6 OTT here in a 13th last year. This years field is as weak as this tournaments seen in years. What I value as much as anything with approaches this week is long iron play. It didnt matter to him that there were two fewer par 5s at the time, but thats always been a cornerstone weapon for the 82-time PGA TOUR winner. Bay Hill plays as a 7,400-yard par 72 featuring Bermuda greens and much thicker rough than weve seen all year and usually see around Florida. Power Rankings: PGA Championship. The field gets a primer on Thursday when gusts might touch 20 mph. Young, the 2022 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, had quite the week. Ultimately, his top-10 exemption wasnt necessary, anyway, as the entire Korn Ferry Tour graduate reshuffle category looped in on merit, so even its reorder at the conclusion of the West Coast Swing had no impact. More ESPN+ content . is making his 2023 debut: Scheffler picked up his fifth victory over the past 365 days, but he hasn't been as consistent as Rahm during the past few months. Scottie Scheffler became the third straight first-time winner on tour, beating Patrick Cantlay in a sudden-death playoff with a 26-foot putt Sunday at TPC Scottsdale. The qualifications for this exclusive event are pretty simple: win a tournament during the 2021 calendar year, stretching across two seasons (January to December). Of the 23 Player Impact Program winners, the only not to commit is Tiger Woods. *All stats are from a players last 24 rounds. "I mean, I hate them," Hahn said during a phone interview with Golfweek that interrupted his gym workout. The Dick Wilson design is a course that does not allow players to get too creative strategically. They sandwiched a pair of top 15s in his native South Africa in December, so its not like he hasnt put four round together in a minute. Arnold Palmer Invitational, Bay Hill, This week, the tour heads to the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, for the unofficial "fifth major," which now has a $20 . Justin Thomas : Was gaining momentum going into Riviera after a huge final round in Phoenix vaulted him to 4th, but he lost all of that with one of his worst iron performances. He led the field in shots gained: approach this past weekend, the first time he has accomplished that since the 2022 U.S. Open at Brookline. With that being said, some of the players who have caught fire on the greens arent necessarily great putters historically, so well take an average look at SG: Putting on Bermuda.