Bay Hill Citrus Classic
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| Location | Bay Hill, Florida, U.S. |
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| Established | 1966, 51 years ago |
| Course(s) |
Bay Hill Club and Lodge (1979–present) |
| Par | 72 |
| Length | 7,419 yards (6,784 m) |
| Tour(s) | PGA Tour |
| Format | Stroke play |
| Prize fund | $8.7 million |
| Month played | March |
| Aggregate | 264 Payne Stewart (1987) |
| To par | −23 Buddy Allin (1973) |
 Marc Leishman
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The Arnold Palmer Invitational is a professional golf tournament in Florida on the PGA Tour. It is played each March at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge, a private golf resort owned since 1974 by Arnold Palmer in Bay Hill, a suburb southwest of Orlando.
The event was founded in 1979 as a successor to the Florida Citrus Open Invitational, which debuted in 1966 and was played at Rio Pinar Country Club, east of Orlando, through 1978. It has had a number of different names since then, most of them including "Bay Hill," but has played under the Palmer name since 2007. On March 21, 2012, the Arnold Palmer Invitational and MasterCard Worldwide announced an extension to MasterCard's "Presented by" sponsorship until the 2016 tournament.
Tiger Woods won four years in a row at Bay Hill, from 2000 to 2003, one of only four occasions that an event was won four consecutive times on the PGA Tour. In 2004, he was one shot off the lead after opening with a 67, but followed up with consecutive 74s on Friday and Saturday, and tied for 46th place. Woods also won the 2008 and 2009 tournaments, both times with birdie putts on the final hole. He then won the tournament in 2012 by five shots, his first official PGA Tour win in 924 days and his seventh win at the event. Woods repeated in 2013 for his eighth victory at the tournament. He withdrew two days before the 2014 event, citing a bad back, and underwent surgery shortly after.
The Arnold Palmer Invitational is one of only five tournaments given "invitational" status by the PGA Tour, and consequently it has a reduced field of only 120 players (as opposed to most full-field open tournaments with a field of 156 players). The other four tournaments with invitational status are the RBC Heritage, the Dean & DeLuca Invitational, the Memorial Tournament, and the Quicken Loans National. Invitational tournaments have smaller fields (between 120 and 132 players), and have more freedom than full-field open tournaments in determining which players are eligible to participate in their event, as invitational tournaments are not required to fill their fields using the PGA Tour Priority Ranking System. Furthermore, unlike full-field open tournaments, invitational tournaments do not offer open qualifying (aka Monday qualifying).
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