The Tour is turning its attention, once again, to Bay Hill Club and Lodge for the Arnold Palmer Invitational. If you want a more in-depth look at how each golfer in the field fits the course, check out yesterday’s Expected Birdies piece. 

Buy or Sell

According to the simulator, Rory McIlroy ($11,800) should be in consideration despite his hefty price tag. His median projected finish position is 11th.^[1]For reference, the next best median finish position is 26th place for one Viktor Hovland. His raw Power Ranking score is so far ahead of the rest of the field that there isn’t another golfer with a score above 90. In 11 of his last 13 events, McIlroy has finished inside of the top nine. 

Francesco Molinari ($7,200) is the easiest sell of the season. He’s been atrocious lately, to be quite honest. Three of his last four events have been missed cuts. Molinari’s only made cut in that stretch came in the no-cut event down in Mexico. 

Over/Under

Check out this week’s Bogey Free for our over/under picks:

• Adam Scott ($9,700) – o/u 14.5 

• Jason Day ($9,100) – o/u 23.5

• Marc Leishman ($8,600) – o/u 31.5

Mid-Range Matchup

Max Homa (-102 / $7,900) vs. Kevin Kisner (-118 / $7,800)

Homa and Kisner are about as close as you can get whether you look at Expected Birdies or PRK Score. Homa holds the slight edge with Expected Birdies while Kisner is ahead in PRK. The simulator is built on PRK and career scoring volatility so the results there lean pretty heavily towards Kisner. My gut instinct was to go with Homa, but I’m definitely leaning towards Kisner now. 

GPP Plays

As of this writing, I haven’t done the first run of ownership projections. However, I’m imagining that Tommy Fleetwood ($11,000) is going to go under-owned relative to his range of outcomes. Fleetwood was a wet approach shot away from forcing a playoff with Sungjae Im on Sunday. He also has the second-best PRK Score this week with an 87. Historically, golfers in the 80-90 PRK Range have finished in the top 10 about 20% of the time. The simulator likes him even more. It has the Englishman finishing in the top 20 43% of the time. 

Friendly reminder, that I mentioned Scottie Scheffler ($7,700) and Maverick McNealy ($7,400) along with Colin Morikawa ($8,400) in the Expected Birdies piece yesterday.

Digging down a little bit deeper there are plenty of dart throws in the $6,000 range. Matthew NeSmith ($6,800) continues to play well week in and week out. He had a dreadful week with the putter but was 15th in SG: Tee to Green. Sebastian Munoz ($6,900) is rating highly in the PRK Score this week, also. Both NeSmith and Munoz are in the 70-80 range of PRK. Historically, golfers in that group hit the DK bonus^[2]top-50 finish 52% of the time. 

Cash Locks

The cash locks for this week are:

• Collin Morikawa ($8,400)
• Scottie Scheffler ($7,700)

We had our first winner of the year in the cash lock section with Sungjae Im. Here are the year-to-date results for the cash locks:

Model Results & Ownership Projections - Arnold Palmer Invitational