Golf betting tips: Arnold Palmer round one

2pts Taylor and Bezuidenhout to win their two-balls at 3/1 (General)

1pt Taylor, Bezuidenhout and English to win their two-balls at 5/1 (General)

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With rain around and Bay Hill having been turned into a bit of a beast in recent years, it's tempting to look for power mismatches when assessing the first-round three-balls in the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

That said, there's always been something here for shorter hitters so while in-form international sluggers Min Woo Lee and Aldrich Potgieter made some appeal among the earliest starters, it could pay to wait and take our chances off the tee with NICK TAYLOR.

The Canadian is paired with Sam Stevens, a longer and simply better driver of the ball. But Stevens was disappointing in Mexico last time when towards the top of the betting and his PGA Tour record in Florida is dire: six starts, four missed cuts, no top-50s.

Making his debut here in a Signature Event suddenly begins to feel like a big ask for a player who so far has produced his best golf in weaker fields, such as the recent Farmers Insurance Open and a Texas Open played on the eve of the Masters.

Taylor on the other hand has sparked back into life this year, capturing his fifth title in the Sony Open. That marked the return of his trademark approach play and it's remained excellent since, ranking sixth or better in four of his last five starts.

His Bay Hill form is mixed but 12th last year was a personal best and he gained strokes through the bag, so with a superior Florida record which features top-20s at all four PGA Tour events held in the state, he's the one to be with.

DataGolf make Taylor slightly superior right now, so when you throw in his experience, knowledge of the course and form, odds-against perhaps should be odds-on.

With Xander Schauffele returning after two months away and so far yet to make a real impression at Bay Hill, taking Justin Thomas against him at bigger than evens will appeal to some. But just as is the case with Ludvig Aberg, who arguably shouldn't be almost 2/1 to win any two-ball anywhere but is against Scottie Scheffler, taking on one of the very best players in the game isn't something I'm in a rush to do.

Instead, the bet of the day is CHRISTIAAN BEZUIDENHOUT to outscore Chris Kirk.

Both are similar in distance from the tee (Kirk would be slightly longer, in fairness) so this could boil down to approach play and putting and at their best, they'd be quite hard to split, Kirk having the edge with his irons and Bezuidenhout with the putter.

However, since the beginning of last year, Kirk has recorded a negative strokes-gained putting figure in 24 of 29 starts, ranking among the very worst on the circuit, and while it's been a long time since he was among the best, for many years he'd been right around average.

Given that he's not a particularly good driver it becomes very hard to compete with such a big weakness on the greens and that's showing, to the point that he's fallen almost a hundred places behind the rock-solid Bezuidenhout in DataGolf's rankings.

Bezuidenhout was fourth in Phoenix recently before an understandably timid effort at Torrey Pines, which isn't for him. Last week's performance in the Cognizant wasn't great but was still superior to Kirk's and, unlike the American, Bezuidenhout's strengths are firing at the moment.

He leads the head-to-head 11-6 since the beginning of last year, the period which covers Kirk's putting demise, and given that they've similar Bay Hill records it appears to me that Bezuidenhout should be a strong favourite, which he isn't at the time of writing.

At 4/5 each, these two selections would make for a 9/4 double. We can back them at 3/1 generally and that looks very good, although I'll keep something back to throw HARRIS ENGLISH in for a 5/1 treble.

English, who has five top-30s in his last six Bay Hill appearances including a tie for second in 2023, plays with surprise invitee Rafael Campos, whose form since winning in Bermuda has been abysmal, and who plays here for the first time.

Backers of English at a best of 4/7 have more to fear from the course than the opponent.

Posted at 0900 GMT on 05/03/25

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