Arnold Palmer Invitational: Kokrak can improve fine Bay Hill record

We’re treated to another of the PGA Tour’s great golf courses this week as the iconic Bay Hill in Florida hosts the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Given the tournament’s stature it’s no surprise that the likes of Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland are in attendance and all clearly hold solid claims. 

We’re taking them all on, though, and read on to find out who with.

Course form points to Kokrak

Course form is always an important factor to consider when trying to pick a winner of a golf tournament, but this is one tournament where it stacks up more than most. In four previous visits to Bay Hill, last year’s winner Bryson DeChambeau had finished second and fourth, while the four previous winners had all finished inside the top five before they won. Matt Every became the seventh man to win the trophy more than once in 2015 and of course a certain Tiger Woods won this an astonishing eight times, so those who play well here tend to over and over again.

A debutant hasn’t won here since 1990 which is clearly a big negative against Jon Rahm’s chances at 17/2. He’s been a bit off his best recently, so he’s fairly easily passed up. Rory McIlroy is much harder to ignore given he has fine record at Bay Hill which has seen him record five top 10s in seven starts, including victory in 2018. He’s another who doesn’t seem to quite have his A-game at the moment, though, and that’s a big enough question mark at 12/1.

Instead, it’s another with very solid course form in Jason Kokrak who gets the headline vote at 40/1. Kokrak has played this event nine times in his career and has six top 25s and four top 10s in those appearances. Perhaps notable is that three of those top 25s (10,18,8) have come in the last three years, so while he had played well here in the past, he’s become even more comfortable at Bay Hill recently.

He also arrives here a significantly better player given he’s won three times since October 2020 and has played well in several high-profile events too. The most recent of those wins came in the Houston Open at the backend of last year and while he hasn’t been much of a factor in four starts since, he’s played some steady golf.

Given the likes of McIlroy, Tyrrell Hatton and Francesco Molinari have all won this tournament, it’s clear Links exponents do well here and while Kokrak doesn’t have a sparkling record at The Open, he has played well in two of his four starts with a T23 in 2019 and T26 last year.

He looks a big player this week.

Casey and Van Rooyen can go well 

Overseas players have a very good record here. The second and third last year and the first three home in 2020 were all from overseas, while the five winners before DeChambeau were all international players. Clearly Rahm and McIlroy head the international challenge this year, but it might pay to take a chance on Paul Casey at 33/1 and Erik Van Rooyen at 70/1.

Casey looked jaded at the end of 2021, but seems back to his best now with four top 25s in as many starts this year. The clear question mark for the next few months with the Englishman is how he would respond to the loss of his caddie, John McLaren, but given he led the field in Greens In Regulation at Riviera and was sixth in SG: Approach, the transition to a new bag-man doesn’t seem to have been too damaging.

He heads to Florida – the scene of his last two PGA Tour wins – and he returns to a course where he has some solid form, including a 10th place finish last year and ninth in 2016. There have been plenty of other good performances too and he looks to have excellent claims of contending here.

Van Rooyen doesn’t have much course form to speak of with just one appearance yielding a tie for 57th last year, but he’s been playing some nice-enough golf over the past few months with a tie for 12th at the Abu Dhabi Championship – an event played on a Links course – pointing to him taking well to this test. He’s already a winner on the PGA Tour so he has that monkey off his back and with a third at the WGC Mexico Championship in 2020 as well as two top 10s in last year’s FedEx Playoffs, he isn’t overawed by these high-profile tournaments.