2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational predictions: Two long-shot picks
The Year of the Long Shot continued on the PGA Tour last weekend.
Austin Eckroat, who went off at 125/1 last Thursday, took home the title at the 2024 Cognizant Classic to give us our seventh winner with triple-digit odds this season.
The other two winners were +8000 (Hideki Matsuyama) and +4000 (Jake Knapp), so we haven’t seen anyone even remotely close to the chalk come through yet.
The Tour now heads to Orlando for one of its signature events, The Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.
As always, the API features a deep field this year.
Scottie Scheffler (+650, FanDuel) is the betting favorite, but he’s got to contend with Rory McIlroy (+900), Viktor Hovland (+1600), Xander Schauffele (+1600), Patrick Cantlay (+1800) and Ludvig Aberg (+1800).
There’s plenty of starpower in this field and that’ll make it tough for another long shot to crash the winner’s circle, but there have been some surprises here, including last year when Kurt Kitayama won as a massive long shot.
I’d understand if anybody wanted to skip right past this number given Sungjae Im’s current form, but we know that the South Korean’s ceiling is incredibly high and this is a course that seems to fit his game.
Im has played Bay Hill five times and has finished third twice, 21st twice and 20th once.
If Im starts to show any bit of form this number will crash, so I’m happy to take a chance on a player who has the talent to hang with the big boys at a terrific number.
It’s always interesting to see what happens to the betting market the week after a trendy player disappoints.
Last week, it seemed like Christiaan Bezuidenhout was everyone’s favorite long shot at PGA National.
The South African was in good form and has played well in Florida (his adopted home state), so it made sense that his bandwagon was filling up.
But Bezuidenhout never got it together at PGA National and finished T76.
All the hype, understandably, subsided.
That’s good news for value-seekers, who now get to back Bezuidenhout at a longer price at a course where he’s finished 18th, 7th and 20th in four starts.
