OTIS Golf

Tournaments / 2026

Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard

2026-03-05 · Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge

Winner
Akshay Bhatia
Winning score
-15
Field
71
Field strength
+0.417 SG

The 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard was played at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge, starting 5 March 2026. Akshay Bhatia won at 15 under par (273). The winning card was 70, 66, 68 and 69, and the win paid $4,000,000. Daniel Berger finished second, and Cameron Young and Ludvig Åberg tied for third. 71 players started the event. The field averaged +0.417 strokes gained per round against the tour baseline. The full leaderboard below lists every player's finish position, round scores and total to par. Every figure on this page comes from the PGA Tour's published final leaderboard for the event — nothing here is estimated or modelled.

Final leaderboard

Top 20 of 71. Search finds any player in the field, including those who missed the cut.

Model score

Backtest · reconstructed

Our course-fit model re-run as it would have seen this week — using only data that existed before the first tee shot — then compared with how the 49 players actually finished. It was not published in advance, so this measures the model, not a call we made.

Dgrade
Rank correlation
+0.215
Top-20 hit rate
60%
Top-10 avg model rank
21.5

Grade is this event’s percentile (29th) against every other event we have scored — not an absolute pass mark. Rank correlation runs −1 to +1, where 0 is a coin flip and a full-field golf model landing near +0.35 is a genuine read.

Who the model liked

Its top 10, and where they finished.

PlayerModelFinish
Scottie Scheffler1st24th
Tommy Fleetwood2nd49th
Russell Henley3rd6th
Collin Morikawa4th5th
Robert MacIntyre5th24th
Si Woo Kim6th13th
Hideki Matsuyama7th41st
Kurt Kitayama8th18th
Xander Schauffele9th24th
Matt Fitzpatrick10th41st

Where it was most wrong

Largest gaps between rank and result, either direction.

PlayerModelFinish
Tommy Fleetwood2nd49th(+47)
Sahith Theegala48th6th(42)
Hideki Matsuyama7th41st(+34)
Billy Horschel46th13th(33)
Matt Fitzpatrick10th41st(+31)
Jhonattan Vegas49th18th(31)
Min Woo Lee36th6th(30)
Daniel Berger31st2nd(29)
Scottie Scheffler1st24th(+23)
Max Greyserman41st18th(23)

One known caveat. Player stats, form and course history are all restricted to what existed before this event. The course archetype is not — it is derived from the venue’s full history, including this edition. That flatters the model slightly and equally at every venue. How the model works.

The venue

This event was played at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, Florida, USA. The venue page carries its scorecard, hosting history and every other tour event played there.

Common questions

Who won the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard in 2026?

Akshay Bhatia won the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge, finishing 15 under par.

Where was the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard played?

The 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard was played at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge, starting 5 March 2026.

What was the winning score at the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard?

The winning score was 15 under par (273 strokes), posted by Akshay Bhatia.

How many players were in the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard field?

71 players started the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. Every one of them appears on the leaderboard below.

Where these numbers come from

Finishes, round scores and to-par figures are the PGA Tour's own published final leaderboard for this event. Nothing is estimated or interpolated — where the tour published no value, this page shows a gap rather than a guess. Full sourcing notes are on the methodology page, and every stat name is defined in the glossary.