Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard: Five things to know heading into Sunday at Bay Hill

ORLANDO, FL – It was a special Sunday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard as Daniel Berger holds a two-shot lead over Akshay Bhatia with three holes remaining in the third round.

Play was stopped for more than an hour on Saturday due to heavy rain.

To prepare you for the early start at Bay Hill Club & Lodge, here are five things to know before the final round:

Berger is back to his best

Sometimes it feels like Daniel Berger is playing on a different golf course. The easy-going Floridian is right at home in Bay Hill and has rarely put a foot wrong in one of the Tour’s toughest venues. When he has done so, he has not made mistakes, with only three bogeys all week.

Berger, who will open Sunday with a 33-foot eagle putt on the par-5 16th, has been troubled by a handful of injuries during his professional career. He missed much of the last four seasons on the PGA Tour due to two major setbacks. At last year’s BMW Championship, Berger broke his right ring finger in an awkward shot.

“The finger that I broke and where I broke it actually hurt a lot more in the butt than I thought it would,” he said Thursday. “I thought it would be like four, five weeks and it turned into three months.”

Prior to the finger injury, Berger spent almost 18 months away from the game battling lower back problems, which kept him out of action for the entire 2023 season. At the time, he was ranked 19th in the world, had been part of the record-setting US Ryder Cup team just months earlier and was coming off his most consistent season on Tour.

Now returning to full health, the four-time PGA Tour winner is returning to the old Berger with his sights set on the biggest win of his career.

Can Bhatia achieve big success?

How big could Bhatia’s birdie game prove to be on Saturday night?

The two-time Tour winner decided to attempt an up-and-down birdie after the horn to cut Berger’s lead to just two. He did so in the dark and changed his mindset heading into Sunday.

“To get birdies on those two holes is obviously great. Fifteen is a bonus. Sixteen is kind of a must, with Daniel having 25 feet,” Bhatia said Saturday evening. “So then, yeah, just need to keep doing what I’m doing. It’s fun to be in the hunt. I told Joe (Greiner), it’s like what an amazing job we have, just to be able to do this, I mean, it’s my workday, and so it’s a great privilege to be in this position.”

Bhatia has traveled a different path than most of his peers his age. He left college, electing to find his way on the mini tours, slowly making his way onto the Korn Ferry Tour and then the PGA Tour. He earned his first win at the Barracuda Championship in 2023 and then his second win in a playoff at the Valero Texas Open the following year.

Now, at just 23, Bhatia is set to make a breakthrough at a signature event and, to top it all, it is shaping up to be a long career.

Scheffler cowered, then Bay Hill backed off a bit… again

Have you ever heard the old golf saying “A Tale of Two Nines”? Well, if you didn’t, Scotty Scheffler certainly lived it up on Saturday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, his hopes dashed for the second consecutive day before the finishing hole at Bay Hill.

Scheffler looked visibly frustrated after ending his second round with a three-putt bogey and hitting his ball into the lake on the right side of Bay Hill. His luck continued on Saturday, starting the third round at 3 over par before taking the turn.

After a much-needed break thanks to Mother Nature, Scheffler showed signs of his usual self, posting five birdies in six holes on the back nine, giving himself a glimmer of hope heading into the closing stages.

A poor drive on the 18th found Scheffler in thick rough to the right of the fairway and faced a difficult approach over water to find the green. Even as the best player in the world, Scheffler was unable to get his wedge shot far enough to send his ball into a watery grave again.

Scheffler certainly bounced back on Sunday, especially at The Players Championship, where he started five shots behind in the final round before winning, but at 10 shots behind, that may be out of the question.

Did Saturday’s rain shape Sunday in Bay Hill?

As the third round was heating up, the weather was looking different. A small but heavy rain cell made its way to the north over Bay Hill, and dropped about a quarter inch of water on the grounds of Arnie’s place over a period of about 15 minutes. But how will Saturday’s rain shape Bay Hill’s game on Sunday afternoon?

If there were any examples of how differently the course played after rain on Saturday, look no further than Cameron Young, who made four consecutive birdies after the restart to solidly cement himself in Arnie’s spot.

“So it kind of went, you know, down a notch from what we call Bay Hill on the weekend, just, you know,” Young said on the difficulty of the greens.

Getting on the fairways will still be a premium, with the rough play being the roughest all week due to the extra moisture. But, as Sunday passes, hopefully the greenery will return to its original glory.

“The greens were definitely a little slower, a little more receptive,” Sepp Straka said after a third-round 66. Apart from this, he is four shots behind Berger’s lead. “(They) started to dry out a little bit by the end of the day. I mean, there’s no moisture in there, so I think it’ll go OK and they’ll be nice and firm again tomorrow.”

When will we see McIlroy again?

McIlroy was spotted on site at Bay Hill ahead of his tee time, attempting to warm up on the range, but things turned sour for the Northern Irishman, who suffered a muscle spasm in his lower back.

The question now is will McIlroy be fit enough to defend The Players next week? This would not be the first time he has been unable to defend one of his major wins on Tour. McIlroy missed the 2015 Open Championship at “The Home of Golf” after rupturing a ligament in his left ankle while playing soccer before his scheduled title defense at St. Andrews.

There has been no statement yet from the world number two, but he is still scheduled to hold it next week in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.