Adam Scott features in a near 6/1 treble for the first round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, played at the fearsome Bay Hill.
Golf betting tips: Arnold Palmer Invitational round one
1pt treble Scott, Mitchell & Taylor to win their two-balls at 5.9/1 (BoyleSports, bet365)
It's back to two-balls for the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the pick of them on day one looks to be ADAM SCOTT, who can put his experience and class to use and see off Aldrich Potgieter.
Scott carded two rounds of 63 at Riviera last time to finish fourth and while that was just one place ahead of his young opponent, for Scott it was an extension of some excellent golf dating back to September.
Potgieter on the other hand has barely featured and I suspect he'll return to the bottom end of the leaderboard here. The Genesis Invitational will prove to be one of the most power-friendly tournaments played all year, whereas Bay Hill isn't often about that these days.
So while Potgieter had everything in his favour last time out, here he'll find plenty against him and there's no encouragement to be found in last year's debut, when he shot 79-73. Just three people were behind him after round one and just eight scored worse come the end of 36 holes.
Significantly, he'd arrived at Bay Hill on the back of second place at a big-hitters' course in Mexico, yet it counted for nothing. The same may well be true 12 months on and in Scott we've a reliable conveyance against him.
Sam Burns (5/6) and Hideki Matsuyama (5/6) will do for many as they're paired with two who return from surgery, namely Sungjae Im and Justin Thomas. I'm not sold on the merits of making this your comeback event of choice and it's easy to see both Im and Thomas struggling, but Burns has been largely poor and doesn't love it here, so of the pair it's Matsuyama who makes more appeal.
Matsuyama's price is fair but I prefer KEITH MITCHELL against JT Poston.
Mitchell has two top-six finishes at a course where he's made all five cuts, he's a winner in Florida at what's now the Cognizant Classic, and he produced an outstanding weekend's golf to finish sixth there last week.
The very fact he's played in Florida in advance of Bay Hill gives him a potential edge over Poston, but it's the latter's discomfort at this extremely difficult golf course which makes Mitchell look such a solid bet.
Poston has played here five times for a best of 50th, and in each of the three which featured both players, it's Mitchell who has fared best. In fact he was 14 shots too good on the one occasion they both made the weekend.
With Poston's long-game not very good at Riviera, where he missed the cut, I'll be disappointed if Mitchell can't oblige. Doing so might not require anything better than a low-70s round and he has stacks of those to his name here.
At odds-against, NICK TAYLOR is another who is selected in large part due to the perceived vulnerability of his opponent, JJ Spaun.
This place ought to suit a US Open champion but Spaun has broken 70 once in 18 rounds and generally struggled. Taylor has done that three times in his last 10 and appears to be getting to grips with Bay Hill, having been 12th two years ago and played well enough in 2025.
He's also in much better form and has in fact outperformed Spaun in all three events they've both played this season. The head-to-head score in rounds one and two reads 6-0 to Taylor and he can extend it at a nice price.
Patrick Rodgers looks like a very strong 8/13 shot against Brian Campbell, badly out of sorts and able to beat just four players here last year, but it may be that most firms leave that one out and as such I'll stick to a small treble at close to 6/1.
We have to acknowledge that Bay Hill is a course which can ruin anyone's scorecard with one or two mistimed errors so as far as two-balls go, small stakes and speculation is the way to play.
Posted at 21:20 GMT on 03/03/26
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