Arnold Palmer Invitational this week will pay out a total purse of $12M, which the PGA Tour upped in NovemberGETTY IMAGES
The Arnold Palmer Invitational this week will pay out a total purse of $12M, which the PGA Tour upped in November as part of a "concerted effort by the golf world to keep Palmer’s legacy alive," according to Mike Bianchi of the ORLANDO SENTINEL. The upped total purse has helped give the tournament "elite status among the regular tour events." After Palmer passed away in '16, there were "legitimate worries that his tournament would become an afterthought to the world’s top players." The golf calendar is "crowded with the four majors and four World Golf Championship events that are more prestigious and lucrative to the world’s top players." The world’s premier golfers found it "extremely hard to skip" the API when Palmer was still alive because they did "not want to personally disappoint" him. It was "more difficult for golfers to bypass Bay Hill when they had to tell Arnie himself rather than an anonymous tournament director." But Palmer's tournament "continues to thrive as one of the top events in the sport." This year's event features top players including Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland, Scottie Scheffler and Hideki Matsuyama (ORLANDO SENTINEL, 3/3). In Orlando, Edgar Thompson notes Palmer could "not guarantee all the top players would show up given conflicts created by a jammed-packed PGA Tour schedule." But he did his best to "ensure Bay Hill Club and Lodge, fangs barred, was ready to greet arrivals with a four-day test of golf not for the feint of heart" (ORLANDO SENTINEL, 3/3).
