Arnold Palmer Invitational betting guide: 5 picks our expert loves this week

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator, Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a host and regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sports betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow Brady on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational, which gets underway Thursday in Orlando, Fla.

As the PGA Tour shifts from west to east and the season’s first major championship nears ever closer, a heavy dose of big-boy events is currently dominating the Tour calendar. The Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill will mark the third Signature Event in four weeks — and next week is another with the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass. Like Riviera two weeks ago, the API is another 72-player field that features a 36-hole cut. The top 50 players and ties will make it to the weekend, along with anyone sitting within 10 shots of the lead.

Bay Hill Club & Lodge was originally designed by Dick Wilson and Joe Lee but later became Arnold Palmer’s baby and like Arnie liked to do, he tweaked the golf course many times over. What we have now feels like the masterpiece: a par 72 course that stretches to nearly 7,500 yards and features relatively narrow fairways and large, firm, and fast Bermudagrass greens. This will mark the third straight season that the tournament has been classified as Signature status on Tour. It is very much a Florida-style track with 84 sand bunkers, palm trees, thick, penal rough. It’s susceptible to extreme winds, and nine of the 18 holes feature water hazards that are very much in play.

Certainly much of the agronomy is different at Bay Hill than at Riviera but what remains the same is both are stern tests of golf that will require a player do just about everything very well. Both accuracy and distance are needed off the tee. Ball striking is crucial, and even though the greens are large, hitting them in regulation is difficult. The rough is especially thick. Scrambling around the greens is paramount – and then putting on these fast and firm surfaces is a real challenge.

There isn’t necessarily one or two areas of emphasis that lead to success on this golf course but more so, every club in the bag needs to be firing at a high level. One particular stat that is worth noting is Hole Proximity from 200+ yards, as Bay Hill, when including the par 3 holes, has more approach shots of this length than any other regular Tour stop golf course. So add long-iron play to your long list of necessities this week.

Course form has proven to be a strong indicator here at Bay Hill and so has Open Championship or links golf success. The forecast is calling for winds in the 10-15 MPH range with chances of thunderstorms looming in the afternoons. For correlated courses this week, I used TPC Scottsdale – Scottie Scheffler being a recent example of a player that has won twice at both venues. I also used TPC Craig Ranch, another venue that is home to a Scheffler victory. Finally, from a links perspective, I used the Renaissance Club where they play the Genesis Scottish Open, Royal Portrush (yet another place Scheffler has won), and Royal St. George’s, home to the 2021 Open Championship.

Tommy Fleetwood (20-1)

The last time we landed on the Englishman, he cashed an outright win for us at the Tour Championship last August. He’s played twice so far on Tour this season, finishing fourth at Pebble Beach and seventh two weeks ago at the Genesis Invitational. He’s twice been 10th here at Bay Hill and once finished third. Fleetwood finished runner-up at Royal Portrush in 2019 and has finished fourth and sixth at the Scottish Open. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks third in this field for Scrambling and 13th in Hole Proximity from 200+ yards.

Matt Fitzpatrick (25-1)

Another Englishman that has been playing wonderful golf this season, Fitzpatrick finished top 10 earlier this year in Phoenix at TPC Scottsdale and ranks fourth on Tour for Strokes Gained: Approach. Over the last 24 rounds, he is fourth in this field for Hole Proximity from 200+ yards. He’s finished ninth, 14th, and 22nd here at Bay Hill, 20th and fourth at Royal Portrush, and fourth and sixth at the Scottish Open.

Hideki Matsuyama (37-1)

The last time we were on Matsuyama he lost in a playoff in Phoenix to Chris Gotterup. That was his second runner-up finish in Phoenix, a place he’s also won twice. He’s been as high as sixth here at Bay Hill and third at TPC Craig Ranch. Matsuyama ranks second in this field for Hole Proximity from 200 yards or more and is No. 1 on Tour in Scrambling. His kryptonite this season has been off the tee. If he can find more fairways this week, he will be tough to beat. Despite losing strokes off the tee to begin this season, Matsuyama has finished 13-11-2-8-28 in five starts. I have to hope that a week off between starts helped him work things out with the driver. I do believe that when Matsuyama has his A-game, he is one of the few players in the world who can beat Scheffler and McIlroy.

Robert MacIntyre (58-1)

Like Matsuyama, the Scotsman really just has one soft spot this season and that is with his approach play. Everything else has been solid and the short game has been magnificent. MacIntyre finished fourth in Hawaii to begin the year and was 20th two weeks ago at Riviera. He finished 11th here at Arnie’s place last season and two starts prior to that, took sixth in Phoenix. His links prowess is some of the best in the game, finishing sixth at Royal Portrush in 2019 and seventh last summer. He was eighth at Royal St. George’s in 2021 and went from runner-up to outright winner at the Scottish Open in 2023 and 2024.

Nicolai Hojgaard (60-1)

Hojgaard was red-hot last week at the Cognizant Classic over the weekend. After making the cut on the number, he shot 66-65, the lowest weekend total in the field, to finish sixth. A few weeks before that, he was third at TPC Scottsdale. He was 14th at The Open Championship at Royal Portrush last July and has finished fourth and sixth at the Scottish Open. Over the last 24 rounds, Hojgaard ranks 15th in this field for SG: Approach, sixth for Driving Distance, and is 19th for Hole Proximity from 200+ yards. He is 10th on Tour for SG: Off the Tee and is 44th in Scrambling.