Inside the Field: WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational

ORLANDO, Fla. - Arnold Palmer was as American as a man could be, but the lush green "house" he watched over and cared for so dutifully on the south end of this tourist town has taken on a distinct global flavor in choosing its winners. In the last five years at Bay Hill Club and Lodge, the tournament has crowned champions from Australia (twice), Northern Ireland, Italy and last year, England, as Tyrrell Hatton wore the champion's red alpaca cardigan, an Arnie tradition. Make way: The Arnold Palmer Invitational has become the Arnold Palmer International. South Africa's Ernie Els became the first international player to break through, winning in 1998 at Bay Hill in what was the 20th edition of Palmer moving the tournament across town from Rio Pinar to Bay Hill. Els would win again in 2010), but that first one included a 36-hole Sunday finish as a result of bad weather that week. Players were not re-grouped for the fourth round. Els went out with Tiger Woods, who eventually would win eight titles at Bay Hill, and Davis Love III, a longtime Palmer family friend who wanted nothing more than to win at Arnie's Place. Els went out in 65 in the morning round, trouncing Woods by eight and Love by 10. Neither player recovered to challenge him in the afternoon. Els, who was commuting from the Lake Nona Club just down the road, would win by four. "I became World No. 1 that day, so I was in a very good mood all around," Els said. "That night, myself and Liezl (Ernie's wife) sat in the men's grill with Mr. Palmer, having a few beers, chatting, celebrating the win. It was a great night." Hatton won last March in the PGA TOUR's final start before COVID-19 restrictions would hit. After one round was contested at THE PLAYERS Championship the following week, the TOUR shut down, and players went on a three-month hiatus. England's Hatton survived just as much as he won at API, finishing at 4-under 284, the highest winner's score in the tournament's 42-year history at Bay Hill. Hatton also was the last player on TOUR to win in front of a full crowd (there will be a limited number of fans this week). Previous international winners before Hatton to build and extend this impressive stretch? Jason Day and Marc Leishman pulled off an Aussie double in 2016-17; Rory McIlroy stepped through to win in 2018; and Italy's Francesco Molinari (2019) also landed a victory at one of the TOUR's more iconic settings. Day was the last player to receive a congratulatory handshake and the winner's trophy from Palmer, who died six months later. What's behind such a strong international winning streak at one venue, the longest on TOUR? For one, the Bay Hill event, a limited-field invitational (123 players in this week's field), has always made it a mission showcase the game's top global stars. Long before there were World Golf Championships, Palmer went above and beyond to extend invitations to the very best players in the world. Seve Ballesteros played Bay Hill, as did Ian Woosnam, and Bernhard Langer, and Nick Faldo. Greg Norman and Nick Price, World No. 1s, were Orlando residents for a time who played Bay Hill faithfully. Japan's Jumbo Ozaki, one of his era's longer hitters, competed here. One Japanese golf writer on site in 1995 famously ran out to see how long John Daly hit it, and returned with this report: "He's no Jumbo." The Bay Hill event being directly in front of THE PLAYERS for many years in March (the PLAYERS would move temporarily to May but return to a March date in 2019) helped to strengthen the field. Orlando is a popular place to be in March, with the Masters not far around the corner. Joie Chitwood III, in his first year as API's tournament director, said he received nearly 90 requests for exemptions to compete. Hatton, McIlroy, young Viktor Hovland (Norway), Sungjae Im (Korea), Matthew Fitzpatrick and Paul Casey (England) and Hideki Matsuyama (Japan) are but a handful of players hoping to further the trend of international champions at Bay Hill when play starts Thursday. "I don’t think there is any real specific reason. Sometimes you just have runs like that that you can’t really explain," said Leishman, the 2017 API champion and last year's runner-up. With nearly $3.4 million in career earnings at the API, he ranks second only behind Tiger Woods. Christian Bezuidenhout, a promising young South African playing in his second API and housed at Bay Hill as he competes in several events in the United States, sees the golf course as being very similar to those players might see across the European Tour. "On European Tour-style courses, you plot your way around," he said. "I don't think this is your typical PGA TOUR course. It's not just a bomber's paradise, and you see a lot of 2-irons and 3-woods off the tees. You need a plan here." Bezuidenhout played in the second-to-last group on Sunday a year ago, alongside McIlroy, but was one of many players swept away in windy and firm conditions. The scoring average was nearly 76 on Saturday, and just more than 75 on Sunday. Hatton shot 74 Sunday, making pars at his final seven holes. "There’s a lot of firing away from pins, showing discipline at times, and then when you do have a chance, making the most of it," Leishman said. "Depending on the wind there are different holes on different days that you can attack. A lot of them run the same way so you have runs where you’re downwind, and then then you might have six holes into the wind. So understanding the wind and how it changes each day can be important." Take all those factors, mix in high winds and lots of water on the golf course, and it makes for a demanding test. Bay Hill always crowns a deserving winner. Of late, they just all seem to be players with international passports. "So I think it is just an interesting stat that's popped up," Leishman said. Laughingly, he added, "I like it, but maybe we should keep it quiet, so it keeps happening." When Els won at Bay Hill as an international in 1998, little could he know what he was starting. He enjoyed a strong relationship with Palmer, who was warm to him when Els was just starting out, well before he ever started ticking off major championships. When Palmer first invited Els to Bay Hill in 1993, the two played together the opening two rounds, a memory Els still cherishes. "For me to win the tournament twice was, of course, the greatest thrill and honor," Els said. "Whenever I see photos of Mr. Palmer presenting me with the trophy and us laughing together beside the 18th green, it sends a shiver down the back of my neck." PGA TOUR staff writer Ben Everill contributed to this report

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Danielle Kang said Tuesday that she will skip several upcoming LPGA Tour events as she seeks a return to full health.

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It holds as many fans as most NBA arenas and sounds like a college football stadium. No. 16 at TPC Scottsdale is the only fully-enclosed hole on the PGA TOUR, and the only one where traditional golf etiquette is, well, not part of the traditions. Fans cheer when balls hit the green. They boo when they miss. And the people absolutely lose their minds when the ball goes in the hole. Since the WM Phoenix Open moved to TPC Scottsdale in 1987, nine TOUR players (and one robot) have aced the 16th. You’ve likely seen one of these aces more than once. So, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the time Tiger Woods raised the roof at TPC Scottsdale’s 16th hole, here is my list of the top five aces from golf’s rowdiest hole. TIGER WOODS (1997) “They’re gonna go nuts when he hits this thing” is the best way to describe every tee shot at No. 16 at the WM Phoenix Open. In 1997, the rowdy crowd at TPC Scottsdale hit new decibels as a 21-year-old Tiger Woods made his WM Phoenix Open debut. Woods had already won three times since turning pro five months earlier and was coming off a win at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, where he beat the reigning PGA TOUR Player of the Year, Tom Lehman, in a playoff. By Saturday, Woods was 10 shots behind eventual winner Steve Jones and his title hopes were mostly out of reach. But no one remembers that. They just remember his shot at No. 16. Woods’ playing partner that day, Omar Uresti, hit first and put his ball 3 feet behind the pin. “As soon as it landed, I made the mistake of thinking to myself, ‘Let’s see you hit it closer than that,” Uresti told PGATOUR.COM in 2015. Tiger did. Using a 9-iron on the 152-yard hole, Woods took dead aim and his ball took two soft bounces before falling into the hole. The Arizona crowd went bonkers, chucking beer all over the tee box. “I think I broke Fluff’s hand,” Woods said of his high five for then-caddie Mike Cowan. He proceeded to whiff on Uresti’s high five before famously raising the roof. Woods eventually finished the tournament at 9-under, good for a T18 finish. The shot might be Woods’ most memorable from a tournament he did not win. It’s also a mainstay on his highlight reels and gave the world a glimpse of the Tiger Mania that would definite the PGA TOUR for the next 20-plus years. JARROD LYLE (2011) It had been nine years since No. 16 had seen a hole-in-one before Jarrod Lyle stepped up to the tee box during the second round in 2011. The big Australian played a draw with enough spin to pull the ball left upon landing and allow it to slide into the front portion of the hole. Lyle threw his arms up in the air and eventually got the crowd going with some windmills. The hole-in-one would serve as a trademark moment for a player gone too soon. Lyle had battled acute myeloid leukemia as a teenager. He was diagnosed with the disease a second time in 2012. He fought back to play in 20 PGA TOUR events from 2014-2016, but his leukemia would return again in 2017, and in 2018 he passed away at age 36. At the 2019 WM Phoenix Open, a memorial was placed on the No. 16 tee box, along with an honorary yellow plaque. LDRIC (2016) Just 19 years after Eldrick Woods, better known as Tiger, had his hole-in-one at No. 16, a new LDRIC, a golf robot, made one of its own. Unlike most golfers who’ve made holes-in-one at No. 16, LDRIC played a baby fade with a one-handed finish onto the green. The swing did feel a bit robotic though, if you ask me. While LDRIC made the ace on its fifth try, the dynamics are impressive considering Golf Laboratories’ Gene Parente gave the robot the wrong club. The San Diego-based creator of the 750-pound contraption thought LDRIC would be hitting a 158-yard shot during the Wednesday practice round but LDRIC was actually asked to play a shot from 20 yards closer. Parente had armed LDRIC with a 7-iron, and rather than change clubs, Parente re-calibrated LDRIC’s swing. LDRIC’s first shot went over the pin, but Parente was able to adjust the swing formula enough to go pin-seeking by the fifth shot. “There was no science at this point, it was pure intuition,” Parente said. LDRIC stands for “launch directional robot intelligent circuitry.” Or, in golf terms, Robot Tiger. FRANCESCO MOLINARI (2015) Want to see Francesco Molinari get pumped up? Yes, the famously stoic Francesco Molinari. Watch his hole-in-one highlight at No. 16 in 2015. Playing in soft conditions from just 133 yards out on Saturday, Molinari sent a pitching wedge past the pin on the right side of the hole and spun it back for the bucket. A grinning Molinari raised his arms, gave high fives to Harris English and Brian Davis and even waved to the crowd to get them more hyped up. By this point, the gallery was already throwing bottles onto the hole, making it look like an updated version of Woods’ hole-in-one in 1997. Davis had to wait 10 minutes for tournament officials to pick up the foreign objects before he could hit his tee shot. And that was before they got to the green. Upon getting to the hole, Molinari tossed his ball into the stands (Who did he think he was, Mike Evans?), but a fan responded by throwing it back. “They nearly hit Brian Davis,” Molinari said. “A volunteer just raked it out of the bunker and gave it to me at the end of the round. It was nice to get it back. I don’t know if I will keep it or give it to someone. I wasn’t expecting to see it coming back from the stands.” Somehow, Davis did manage to par the hole. And he got to witness greatness in the process. Molinari carded an eight-under 64 during that third round, tied for the second-lowest score of the day, but a 72 on Sunday dropped him into a T22 finish. HAL SUTTON (1988) He’s the trailblazer they’re all trying to copy. Sutton is the man credited with the first ace on No. 16 in the WMPO. He did it in 1988, after winning the event in 1986 and finishing second the following year, in TPC Scottsdale’s debut as the host venue. Sutton played a slight draw into a third-round back pin location. Correctly judging a stiff wind, he rode the right-to-left green contours into the hole. The cheer sounded loud for a standard hole-in-one, foreshadowing the future of the iconic hole. Sutton, who opened 68-66, went 74-73 on the weekend to finish T26. While Sutton didn’t get the beer shower his successors did, he is the first name on the statue beside the tee box that honors the aces. There’s a first time for everything, and Sutton was the first to give the fans at golf’s rowdiest hole something to scream about.

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