Lethal par-3s, Scottie’s even-year blessing, and rogue Luke Donald thoughts: 10 things for Bay Hill

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Golfpocalypse is a meandering collection of words that runs prior to each week’s PGA Tour event. Reach out with your hottest takes on absolutely anything at [email protected]. We’ll publish the best emails here.

1. The Rogue Golf Thought: Ban Luke Donald from the Ryder Cup

The word “welp” is a semi-annoying piece of modern slang, but it does have a useful role—it describes that feeling when you’re totally screwed, and all you can do is shrug your shoulders and submit to fate. Which makes it a perfect word for the Americans who are reacting this morning to the news that Luke Donald is running it back for a third as European Ryder Cup captain.

WELP.

It’s over. The 2027 Ryder Cup is done. You shouldn’t even watch it. It’s already incredibly hard to win one of these things on the road, and to do so, you either need a wild, anomalous comeback (Medinah, 2012), or a massive leadership and strategic mismatch like we saw with Donald vs. Keegan Bradley at Bethpage. Instead, you’re going to get Donald vs. (probably) Tiger Woods, who was an awful captain at the Presidents Cup in Melbourne, and they’ll be playing in Ireland. It’s a total disaster. Europe is operating on a completely different level right now, and the Americans have thus far shown no ability to adapt. The only way to fix this is to make a rule that levels the playing field by force. Ban Luke Donald, ban analytics, ban course set-up, maybe ban captains in general? Have a computer set the match-ups randomly each night, and go from there. Anything else, and the U.S. looks worse than hopeless.

2. Scottie Watch: Will Bay Hill bring the even-year blessing or the Thursday curse?

Scottie won at Bay Hill in 2022 and 2024, and went on to win the Masters both years. Now it’s 2026, and we’ll see if the pattern holds.

The more compelling trend, though, is this bizarre Thursday slump. Can we extract any meaning from it? Is it just noise? The fact that it’s happened three times now, followed by three scorching rounds that take him close to victory or at least a top ten, means we don’t have to feel like we’re stretching for a story—it’s a real thing, albeit inscrutable. As golf stats guru Justin Ray noted, he’s +7 on those three Thursdays, and -42 for the rest of the week. Weird stuff! Here’s what Scheffler had to say about it when asked on Friday at Riviera:

“I think in both the last two, teeing off late is never the easiest and I’ve gotten off to slow starts. Like teeing off yesterday when we did was pretty challenging around this golf course. I mean, the wind and with how soft the greens were and how bumpy they can get along with wind and they’re fast, 2 if it was last week it would have been easier because you can kind of at least try to jam it in … yesterday was definitely a day none of mine were going in.”

A day later, he referenced a “small sample size,” which basically means he doesn’t have a better explanation than we do. Or—more to the point—doesn’t think there really is a great explanation.

The good news for him is that he can prove it pretty easily at Bay Hill on Thursday, and shut us all up.

3. Golf Tweet of the Week

Since we’re on Scottie, this is a great one from Kyle Porter:

Basically, if he’s even a little above average with the putter, he’s going to win here, and he’s now a very good putter. Better hope he shoots a 79 on Thursday!

4. Bay Hill is redeemed by its nasty par-3s

There’s a lot to love about this course, but for me, the stars of the show are three absolutely brutal par-3s, starting with the second hole on the course. As Tim Gavrich wrote, this one is “criminally underrated,” downhill, extremely long and with a slanted green. Then there’s no. 14, the second-hardest hole on the course last year (hardest in the final round), where it’s so easy to be short or left off the tee. Finally, and most fun in my book, no. 17, long and over water, the third-hardest hole on the course that dealt 16 double bogeys or worse to the field. The way Russell Henley, last year’s champ, played these three holes in particular is instructive—a great tee shot over the bunker on the second gave him a simple two-putt, the shot of his round on 14 led to a birdie that proved to be the winning margin and a solid up-and-down from the left rough on 17 sent him to the final hole needing only par to win.

Not counting majors and opposite field events, the 14th and 17th alone were the sixth- and seventh-hardest par-3s on the PGA Tour last year, and are the biggest reason why Sunday viewing at Bay Hill is a perfect appetizer for the Players, despite a course that, at its worst, seems to embody the aesthetic I call “Florida bland.”

5. Ranking the sponsor’s exemptions

Best – Jordan Spieth. Wooooooo, controversy! Up to this point, Spieth has qualified into the signatures on his own accord, but now he’s got to rely on the exemption, and the usual suspects are going to be mad! Not me, though—I say, get this guy in every tournament possible.Fun – Billy Horschel – We still haven’t seen much since his injury layoff ended last fall, but hope springs eternal, and I need to see his big grin late on a Sunday soon.Fine – Max Greyserman – Good player, 52nd in the OWGR, worthy of the field, also extremely lucky that Rickie Fowler qualified on his own.Generous – Chris Kirk. He’s been at Bay Hill 12 of the last 13 years, and has two top-tens, so, sure, make sense. But it’s also super generous, seeing as he’s 98th in the OWGR and has missed four of five cuts this year.

6. The Jordan Spieth Sadness Watch

We went from an 8.5 pre-Pebble to a 7.2 pre-Riviera, and I’m pleased to announce that following his T-12 finish in L.A., I’m downgrading our collective Spieth sadness to a 6.6. Once you’re below a 7.0, it gets very dangerous, because that’s when the first signs of hope start to kick in. A near top-ten in a Signature Event??? No missed cuts in THREE WEEKS????? He’s practically back in major form!!!!!

Be careful, my friend. You’re walking down a dangerous road. I would like to remind you that he’s only 53rd in strokes gained this year, but do not look—I said do NOT look—at his SG: Putting, where he’s back up to 13th after literal years of sub-mediocrity. Does that mean he’s ready to become ELITE and ascend to the delirious heights of the sport???

Anyway, here’s something a little weird: He’s only played Bay Hill three times in his career, but twice he’s finished T-4. All things considered, I think we can give ourselves permission to be reasonably unreasonable with our expectations this week.

RELATED: Scottie Scheffler reveals why he doesn’t ask to sit next to Jordan Spieth at the Masters Champions Dinner

7. Matt Fitzpatrick has (still) been a little too quiet

He won the DP World Tour Championship, to be completely fair, and I’m being 100% Americentric to ignore that, but also, the fact that Patrick Reed jumped in for a handful of DP World Tour events and completely dominated right off the bat makes me think that I’m right to devalue the DPWT just a little. Reed was playing excellent golf, no doubt, but it almost gave the vibe of, “this is what it looks like when an actual pro tees it up in the minor leagues.”

Too harsh? In any case, giving whatever credit Fitzpatrick is due for that win, it feels like he’s been under the radar a little too long. Back at Riviera, I said he’s at his best when we least expect him, and I think after a handful of good-not-great finishes to start the year, he’s poised to do something big. From 2019-2022, he posted four straight top-tens at Bay Hill, and while he’s cooled off in the years since, the fact that the course has favored accuracy over bombers in the last two years makes me think he’s a very good pick this week.

8. The Arnold Palmer umbrella is a top-tier logo

The story behind how Palmer found the umbrella logo is hilarious in its randomness. From Cam Morfit at the PGA Tour:

Arnold Palmer Enterprises, Inc., was established in 1961, and later, at a meeting in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, Palmer and partners brainstormed possible logos … They looked at laurel leaves and crossed golf clubs and other ideas that weren’t quite right until Palmer, frustrated, got up to stretch his legs. He walked into the rain and saw a lovely woman get out of her car and pop open a multi-colored umbrella. Somehow, it worked.

Did it have any obvious connection to Palmer? No. Did Palmer protect people from the rain, even metaphorically? Again, no. Palmer almost never laid up, and had, in the words of the APE promotional materials, “a rebel’s heart over the ball.” He was James Dean in spikes. He would champion children’s causes. The umbrella signified none of these things.

Palmer, inspired by a “lovely woman”? I am shocked!

It really is an all-time logo, though, and has more than stood the test of time. Looking at the rest of the Tour’s tournament logos (using Joseph LaMagna’s course tiers), the only one that comes close is Pebble Beach with its nifty Cypress Tree background. And for the record, yes, it puts the Travelers umbrella to shame. Clearly the superior umbrella.

9. One Normie Pick, One Weird Pick

For the record, my weird picks so far have finished T-24, T-4, and T-32. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad, but I’m proud of the T-4 (Adam Scott at Riviera). This week, I obviously have to take Scottie as the normie pick, for about eight million reasons. He loves the course, he’s bound to break the Thursday blues, and I feel that by the time his career is over, he’ll have about a dozen trophies from Bay Hill. For the weird pick, I’ll go with Keegan Bradley. He’s got the third-most Data Golf points of any player without a win here, and even though he’s not playing that great this year, he’s been very good at this course, with three top tens in the last five years. Also, I tried to interview Bradley at Bay Hill for 15 minutes in 2014, and it was one of the worst interviews I’ve ever had with another human being in my professional career. Surely that should give me some universal karma to use on this pick, right?

10. The Rogue Non-Golf Though: Analytics is a great way to get through a temporary illness

I’m on day three of the flu right now, and while the worst is definitely over and the fever is gone, my throat is still sore, my nose is still runny, and I’d like to sleep for the next six or seven days. However, I have to say that even in the absolute pits of the flu, I leaned hard into the numbers to track how bad it was getting. I had my thermometer on hand at all times, watching the temp go from its usual 98 degree range all the way up to 102.9 last night, I took one of those three-in-one tests to determine conclusively that I had Flu A (nastier than Flu B, apparently), and I kept strict track of how often I could alternate my Tylenol, Ibuprofen and Nyquil. I’m not saying it was fun—it sucked—but by getting into science mode I at least gave myself some sort of purpose while I suffered. I do not recommend Flu A, but when it comes for you, I do fully recommend becoming a stats nerd. I bet Justin Ray has nine thermometers.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com