Bay Hill Classic
| Location | Bay Hill, Florida |
|---|---|
| Established | 1966, 51 years ago |
| Course(s) | Bay Hill Club and Lodge |
| Par | 72 |
| Length | 7,381 yards (6,749 m) |
| Tour(s) | PGA Tour |
| Format | Stroke play |
| Prize fund | $6.3 million |
| Month played | March |
| Aggregate | 264 Payne Stewart (1987) |
| To par | −23 Buddy Allin (1973) |
 Jason Day
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The Arnold Palmer Invitational is a professional golf tournament 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, Florida, 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. 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.
As a restricted field event on the PGA Tour, only the first 70 players on the previous year's money-list are guaranteed invitations.
Tiger Woods won what was then known as the Bay Hill Invitational four years in a row from 2000 to 2003. This is one of only four occasions that a golfer has won the same event four times in a row on the Tour. In 2004 he was one shot off the lead after opening with a 67, but followed up with back-to-back 74s on the Friday and Saturday, and ended the final round on Sunday in a tie 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 5 shots, his first official PGA Tour win in 924 days and his seventh win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He repeated in 2013 for his eighth victory at the tournament. Two days before the 2014 event, defending champion Woods withdrew from the tournament, 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 Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial, 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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