The PGA Tour is preparing for another signature event this weekend when the PGA Tour’s top players will descend on Bay Hill for the Arnold Palmer Invitational golf tournament. With the Tour continuing their Florida swing, it is time to talk about who might be victorious this weekend and claim victory.

With a full field event like this you will have the biggest names on the PGA Tour, and the World’s No. 1 golfer, Scottie Scheffler, looking for his first victory of 2025. To be fair to Scheffler, he hasn’t had a full start to the season compared to other golfers. A cooking accident which had him undergo surgery on his hand sidelined him during the tour’s Hawaii stretch, and even the start of the west coast swing in California. To date Scheffler is still searching for his first win of the season.

Will he claim victory at Bay Hill for the second straight year?

When it comes to making predictions/picks for golf, there is a method to my madness. The first step in the process is to take a look at the course, and past winners. Let’s see what the Arnold Palmer Invitational has in store for fans this weekend:

Arnold Palmer Invitational (Signature Event)

Bay Hill, Par 72, 7,466 yards

Past Winners

2024: Scottie Scheffler

2023: Kurt Kitayama

2022: Scottie Scheffler

2021: Bryson Dechambeau

2020: Tyrell Hatton

From this point, we have to take a look at who the odds-on favorites are to win the tournament. Here are the Top 5 favorites to win, and these odds are courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook:

Top 5 Odds

• Scottie Scheffler (+230)
• Rory McIlroy (+750)
• Ludvig Aberg (+1600)
• Xander Schauffele (+1800)
• Collin Morikawa (+2000)

My Picks

Every time I produce picks, I break them down in the a variety of picks. You don’t have to make these plays, but this is where I’m leaning in this week’s contest. My favorite picks are players who are less than +2000 odds, with the long shot picks greater than +2000 odds. For this week’s event, here are my Favorite and Long Shot picks:

Favorite: Scottie Scheffler (+230)

Long Shot: Tony Finau (+5500)

The next phase of my picks are players who are slated to finish within a certain area on the leaderboard. The Top 5, 10, 20 picks also include ties, so if a player finished T-20 and you had them as a Top 20 pick, you win. Here are my plays, and the odds, for this week’s signature event:

Top 5

Collin Morikawa (+360)

Ludvig Aberg (+300)

Top 10

Tony Finau (+360)

Shane Lowry (+320)

Top 20

Sahith Theegala (+225)

Min Woo Lee (+200)

BONUS PICKS

Betting on golf is multi-faceted, and you can increase your odds on winning out outright winner bet with the Double and Triple bets. If one of the two players in the double wins, or one of the three in the triple, win, you win the bet. There are other specials plays, but we’ll save those for the big tournaments on the schedule. Here are my bonus plays for this week:

Double: Ludvig Aberg or Tony Finau (+225)

Triple: Ludvig Aberg or Collin Morikawa or Hideki Matsuyama (+600)

Jeff Hartman is the host of the Fairways & Dreams podcast, and a complete breakdown of the above picks can be heard in the podcast player below: