Horse For The Course: PGA DFS Course History - Arnold Palmer Invitational

Joe Nicely's under-the-radar DraftKings, FanDuel PGA DFS picks for the Arnold Palmer Invitational. His Horse for the Course for daily fantasy golf based on course history.

It's great to be back RotoBallers! We didn't have a HFTC article last week due to the WGC-Workday Championship taking place on a brand-new course, The Concession. The Jack Nicklaus-designed track proved to be a cool layout and is one that we'll hopefully see on the PGA Tour again in some capacity. Collin Morikawa turned in a surgical performance to lock up his fourth PGA Tour victory and first WGC win. The 24-year-old incorporated a new "saw" putting grip last week at the Genesis (where his putting numbers were abysmal) and things clicked perfectly at the Workday.

After a week with zero course history, we now head to Bay Hill for the Arnold Palmer Invitational, a longstanding event with years of results to draw from. This is always a special week. Let's dive in!

Horse For The Course is an article that highlights players in this week's field with elite course history and is part of our free PGA DFS content here at RotoBaller. For my favorite DFS plays of the week check out my Core Four article here at RotoBaller every Wednesday. It's part of our amazing PGA Premium package that includes an all-new PGA Research Station, Lineup Builder & Optimizer, and some of the best articles in the PGA DFS industry! You can sign up now using Promo Code: NICE for an extra discount at checkout!

Arnold Palmer Invitational Overview

Sadly, Arnold Palmer is no longer with us, but one of the many ways his spirit lives on is through the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Like the Genesis Invitational a couple of weeks ago, the API is an "elevated status" event, which means a smaller-than-normal field of 120, a huge purse, and a three-year exemption to the winner instead of the standard two-year status that comes with most PGA Tour wins. To state it simply, this tournament is a big deal.

The API consistently draws a strong field of players and this year is no different, as players like Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau, and Patrick Reed headline a stellar list of entrants. Defending API champion, Tyrrell Hatton, will look to repeat at Bay Hill, though he'll have to fend off some of the best players in the world, including a suddenly-surging Jordan Spieth and rising star Will Zalatoris, as well as young guns Viktor Hovland and Sungjae Im.

The field, the wonderful Bay Hill layout, and Arnie's memory always make this a special week for all golf fans, as well as DFS players. I'm really looking forward to it. Let's tee it up!

You can also find out who the smart money is on by checking out Spencer Aguiar's PGA DFS: Vegas Report every week. And be sure to read all of our other top-notch weekly PGA DFS articles to help you win big!

The Course: Bay Hill Club & Lodge

Par 72 - 7,454 Yards, Greens: Bermuda, Designed By: Dick Wilson & Joe Lee with substantial renovations by Arnold Palmer

Arnold Palmer fell in love with this course over 50 years ago and it still holds up in the modern era. Like lots of courses we see during the Florida Swing, water and sand are prominent at Bay Hill. It's long at just over 7,400 yards, but players can't mindlessly bomb away, as some tee shots require lay-ups and a fairly penal rough guards the fairways.

This is a second-shot golf course and those approaches often require longer irons than we normally see on the PGA Tour schedule. One of the reasons Tiger Woods has dominated at Bay Hill throughout the years is his phenomenal iron game from 200-plus yards out. We usually see this tournament play as one of the 10-most difficult courses on the Tour schedule, but while it's hard, it is still possible for golfers to go low here.

For an in-depth breakdown of this week's course, check out RotoBaller's PGA Premium Course Breakdown by Josh Bennett!

Recent Champions & Winning Scores

• 2020: Tyrrell Hatton (-4)
• 2019: Francesco Molinari (-12)
• 2018: Rory McIlroy (-18)
• 2017: Marc Leishman (-11)
• 2016: Jason Day (-17)

Notes From Last Year's Arnold Palmer Invitational

• Last year's winner, Tyrrell Hatton, was featured in HFTC with a DraftKings price tag of $8.1k. Score one for the good guys!
• Hatton was the fifth straight international player to win the API.
• Hatton led the field in Par-3 Scoring and ranked second in SG: Approach for the week.
• Scottie Scheffler led the API field in SG: T2G (+11.6), but lost 4.8 strokes putting en route to a T15.
• High winds made conditions very difficult. Hatton's winning score of 284 was the highest in the history of the event.

The Horses - Arnold Palmer Invitational

Maybe it’s because we know just how unbelievably talented Rory McIlroy (DraftKings: $11,500) is, but rostering him in DFS lately seems to always end with us walking away feeling underwhelmed. It’s not a mad feeling or even something as simple as regret. No, it’s tougher than that to describe. It’s the feeling of longing for something that was once great, like the nostalgia you feel for your favorite childhood movie.

This current version of Rory is like the last Star Wars movie that came out, entertaining enough and a nice way to pass the time, but quickly forgotten and certainly not the Empire Strikes Back. The last Star Wars movie was fine and so was last week’s T6 at the WGC-Workday Championship. It was the type of performance that’s becoming an all-too-familiar display from McIlroy. Not great - he was never in serious contention to win the tournament - but not horrible either - he finished eighth in the elite field in SG: T2G. It was fine. Basically, it was a good popcorn movie. 

After returning from the COVID-19 layoff in surprisingly-sluggish form, McIlroy closed out the fall looking better, logging top-10 outings at the Tour Championship and the U.S. Open, as well as a top-five finish at the Masters. All results that look good on a resume, but were underwhelming to those that actually watched the tournaments. Still doing acceptable numbers at the box office, but failing to leave any sort of lasting impression. That’s the cycle that both Rory and the Star Wars franchise seem to be stuck in. 

Unfortunately, that’s not enough for those of us that remember the greatness that once was. No, we want the Empire Strikes Back. We want Darth Vader telling Luke that he’s his father. We want four major championships by age 25. We want a final-round 64 at Bay Hill to win the 2018 Arnold Palmer Invitational. We want greatness. We want to be amazed again. 

I know very little about the movie business, but I imagine a lot of people in that industry will tell you that a great film isn’t a product of one thing, but rather the result of lots of favorable factors that came together in a terrific environment at just the right time. That’s where we find Rory this week...in a great environment at Bay Hill, a course where he put together that masterpiece win in 2018 and hasn’t finished outside of the top six in any of his other three starts since 2017. All the pieces are in place for greatness this week. Do we get The Empire Strikes Back or do we get another forgettable addition to the franchise?

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Do we think Sungjae Im (DK: $9.7k) even has time to watch movies? I really doubt he’s seen Pulp Fiction, but like Jules Winnfield, perhaps Sungjae is content to simply walk the Earth like Caine from Kung Fu, stopping to play golf in a different town each and every week. Im’s previous odysseys to Bay Hill have proved fruitful, with the young Korean posting third-place finishes in each of his last two API starts.

His results at Bay Hill and a win last year at the Honda Classic reinforce what his stats illustrate...Sungjae loves the Florida Swing and plays his best golf on courses with Bermuda greens. The man that never takes breaks actually skipped the two events prior to the WGC-Workday Championship, likely filling his time off with golf every day and perhaps a few Snickers bars. He knocked off the non-existent rust with a T28 at The Concession last week. Now ready to resume his never ending quest to play as many events as possible, we can expect Im to once again thrive on this familiar Bay Hill layout.

Squint your eyes and you can see a resemblance between Francesco Molinari (DK: $8.7k) and the other Italian Stallion, Rocky Balboa. Like Balboa, Molinari was probably never supposed to get as far as he did - a major championship win at the Open in 2018 and another slipping through his fingers the following year at the Masters - based strictly on his talent. However, Molinari has managed to make up for any physical shortcomings with some serious guts and mettle. 

His ability to get up off the canvas has been strenuously tested after he was TKO’d by Tiger Woods on the back nine of Augusta National two years ago, a defeat that was at least as ugly as the beatdown Clubber Lang put on Rocky the first time they squared off. I don’t know if Moli spent 2020 training at an underground gym in California or in the snowy solitude of a Russian cabin, but it appears as though he’s ready to contend for another championship after logging top-10 results in three of his four starts this calendar year. He captured the API title the last time he teed it up at Bay Hill in 2019, his third top-10 finish in the event since 2016. 

Maybe the Balboa comparison can be just as aptly applied to another player on the comeback trail, Chris Kirk (DK: $7.0k). Kirk’s 2021 rebound is even more impressive than Molinari’s, as the former Georgia Bulldog’s battle with alcohol abuse and depression has undoubtedly required more courage than any obstacle faced on the golf course. 

Kirk has been successful both on and off the course this year, keeping his PGA Tour privileges with a runner-up finish at the Sony Open that was Capra-esque in its drama and emotional resonance. There are signs that the storybook tale can continue this week, as Kirk has posted two T16s in three outings since the Sony and has finished T15 or better in three of his last four starts at Bay Hill.

Of course, not all movies can be The Godfather. Both Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal have had (surprisingly) lengthy careers, proof that the world needs action movies too. It’s the same in DFS, as we’re not always able to fill our lineups strictly with A-listers. That has me in search of some B-movie stars this week at Bay Hill. 

Maybe Emiliano Grillo (DK: $7.4k) and Luke List (DK: $7.2k) can carry our buddy-cop action flick. No, they aren’t true headliners - and you never really know what type of performance you will get from them - but both have the ability to deliver on occasion. 

That’s especially been the case in this event, as they both rank inside the top-five of this week’s field in career scoring average at Bay Hill. Grillo’s 70.38 average at the API places him third on the list (that’s including a DQ last year) and the Chilean heads to Orlando off a T11 last week at the Puerto Rico Open. The just-as-tough-to-trust List brings a 70.50 career average at API to the table this week. Despite just missing the cut at Riviera a couple of weeks ago, List has been solid - by his standards - in 2021, posting a top-10 at the Farmers and a top-25 at the AmEx. These guys are both tremendous ball strikers that are cut from the same cloth, which might explain their similar histories at Bay Hill. They aren’t likely to produce Oscar-worthy performances every time out, but they do throw in the occasional Bloodsport or Hard To Kill - movies that weren’t recognized by the Academy Awards, but most definitely should have been - which is enough to make us sit through all the bad outings in hopes of a rare gem.

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