There’s March Madness, then there’s the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Every March, some of the best active golfers troop to Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge down in Orlando to play for a chance to take home a huge cheque – and of course, to honor the legendary golfer. The Arnold Palmer Invitational started in 1979 to inherit the spot on the PGA Tour left by the Florida Citrus Open Invitational. Before becoming known as the Arnold Palmer Invitational in 2004, the tournament was known as the Bay Hill Invitational, Nestle Invitational, Bay Hill Classic, and Bay Hill Citrus Classic. With each passing annum the payout has grown, with 2020 set to put some serious cash in the hands of top-placing swingers.
Once again, the total purse at the Arnold Palmer Invitational has been juiced up. After hitting, for the first time ever, the $9-million mark in 2019, the Arnold Palmer Invitational is adding $200,000 more to the pot, improving the purse from $9.1 million last year to $9.3 million. That addition was almost as big as the total purse at the 1979 Bay Hill Citrus Classic, which had a $250,000 pot. Of course, inflation would say that the quarter-of-a-million purse back then is worth over a million today, but you could still see the wide gap between the prices of the prizes then and now. Francesco Molinari won the 2019 Arnold Palmer Invitational and took home $1.638 million. Tiger Woods (absent at this year’s affair) is the winningest player in the tournament with eight wins, the last coming in 2013, when he pocketed $1.116 million.
The Complete Breakdown
Based on the current model the PGA TOUR is using to determine the payouts of players, here’s how the money will be divvied up at the 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational.
