We close out the PGA Tour’s Florida Swing this week with the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard, where a large pool of top-class golfers will take to the greens once more.
Surprisingly, a relative unknown on the Tour in Matt Every had won this event at Bay Hill Club and Lodge the past two years. Will Every complete the hat trick at the AP Invitational? Let’s find out by running down a handful full of the tournament’s favorites and dark horses alike below.
If you want to find out who the golf pundits have chosen as this Sunday’s ultimate winner, then check out our experts picks feature right after this.
It’s been about two years since we’ve seen a golfer win three-consecutive starts, and Adam Scott is in fantastic shape to pull off that feat this Sunday.
The Aussie’s back in top form after a disappointing 2015, winning the Honda Classic and the WGC-Cadillac Championship in succession over the previous month. And during his outing at Doral, Scott led all players on the field in strokes gained: tee-to-green and par-5 scoring.
Beyond that, the 35-year-old also had a sweet third-place finish at Bay Hill in 2014, making his +650 odds of sweeping the back-end of the Florida Swing very enticing indeed.
Rory McIlroy
Slowly but surely, World No. 2 Rory McIlroy – the frontrunner for the AP Invitational at +550 – is inching his way back atop the World Golf Rankings. The Irish sensation nearly conquered the Blue Monster a couple of weeks ago with a superb third-place finish, and now has three top 10s and four top 20s in 2016.
In just his first-ever start at Bay Hill last year, McIlroy secured a T11 finish. Wee-Mac still has solid ball-flight control, so his first win of the season could very well come from this week’s tournament for as long as he tweaks his shaky putting mechanics that has led to his demise on more than occasion this season.
Sleepers
Justin Rose
Justin Rose has been hovering around the winner’s bubble throughout his past several starts, and he’s once again in prime position to finally win his first tournament of the season this week at Bay Hill. Not only did the crafty Englishman finish second in 2013 and T3 in 2011 at the AP Invitational, he also has five top 20 finishes out of six PGA Tour starts this season, including a T6 finish at Pebble Beach in February.
Rose is a terrific model of a sleeper candidate with consistent, positive returns from every tournament he appears in, which makes his price of +1,400 at emerging victorious from Bay Hill worth every penny.
Matt Kuchar
Speaking of consistency, just take a look at what Matt Kuchar has done on Tour. The 37-year-old veteran currently holds a streak of 21 games without getting cut, which is about a full calendar year’s span at that.
Okay, so always making the cut doesn’t always translate to quality finishes, and Kuchar is no exception to that rule. Still, a T8 finish at Riviera, T28 at Doral and T11 at Innisbrook from this past week has the Georgia Tech product in relatively good form at making his backers at +2,800 very happy customers.
Long Shot
Matt Every
To be quite brutally honest, we felt like our hands we were forced with this inclusion of Matt Every as a long shot candidate, let alone as a mere entry in this here feature. But hey, this is what you would expect from a golfer that has won the AP Invitational two-years running, right?
Yes, Every’s listed as the 163rd-best golfer in the world and has missed two of his last three cuts. Then again, the Daytona Beach native never really got into any groove before both of his two victories at Bay Hill either.
However, will home-course advantage simply be enough once again to overcome the daunting +6,000 odds stacked against him from pulling off the three-peat at Arnie’s Place?
Writer’s Prediction
Rose (+1,400) outlasts McIlroy in a nail-biting playoff at Bay Hill.
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