Arnold Palmer Invitational tips: Ben Coley previews this week's event

Recommended bets

1pt e.w. Kevin Kisner at 100/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Talor Gooch at 125/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Bud Cauley at 150/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Danny Willett at 200/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

1pt e.w. Chesson Hadley at 200/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

0.5pt e.w. Ernie Els at 300/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

The late withdrawal of Tiger Woods takes some of the gloss off the Arnold Palmer Invitational and robs us off the opportunity to get a firm grip on where the 14-time major champion stands in the Masters pecking order.

Reportedly due to a neck complaint he'd made no prior mention of, Woods' absence from an event he's won eight times in another life is a real concern with Augusta approaching and it's hoped he's passed fit in time for next week's PLAYERS Championship, or at least the following week's Valspar.

Clearly, no Woods makes the task of Rory McIlroy slightly more straightforward and he's a worthy favourite after last year's explosive success. McIlroy putted beautifully for an overdue victory at Bay Hill, where he'd threatened before, and having started 2019 in determined form there are few flaws in the case for a repeat.

At 7/1, he'll do as a one-track attack for many but the price looks short enough to me, given the presence of Justin Rose, Brooks Koepka, Rickie Fowler, Jason Day and Bryson DeChambeau, all more prolific than McIlroy over the last three or four years, all with some sort of chance here.

Fowler would get my nominal vote after an excellent finish to the Honda Classic, but it's difficult to argue that 12/1 about Arnie's successor represents value. Again, this is elite company and while victory in Phoenix might spell the beginning of a purple patch, to some extent we have been here before.

I don't mind getting stuck into the top of the market when the situation calls for it, but Bay Hill, a tricky par 72 where everything has to fire in order to contend, has thrown up some strange results. Most recently, Matt Every secured back-to-back titles while the likes of Martin Laird, Rob Pampling and nearly-men Greg Owen, Edoardo Molinari and Bart Bryant all hint that there's room among the elite for a real spanner.

That's precisely what happened at the Honda Classic and I wonder whether Bud Cauley might be the man to write headlines with an overdue breakthrough of his own.

Cauley is only in the field because Woods withdrew but finishes of fourth and 14th in four visits to Bay Hill confirm that it's a course on which he feels comfortable.

The Alabama native, a close friend of Justin Thomas, tuned up with an excellent 12th place last week, where his typically strong iron play went missing. Everything else fired, though, and his short-game is looking as good as it ever has right now.

If Cauley's approach work returns to expected levels and the wheels keep turning on the rest, he's entitled to step up and his form at Bay Hill suggests he's more effective here than at PGA National, where his results read MC-MC-27-WD prior to 12th place behind Keith Mitchell.

Cauley's best form away from this course and Sedgefield Country Club has come at TPC Four Seasons, which ties in nicely with this, and as a confirmed east-coast man the form he's shown to start the year (MC-12-26-MC-12) goes down as particularly encouraging.

In the summer of last year, Cauley was involved in a life-threatening car accident which again halted the career of a player once considered one of the most promising in the world. The signs are he's getting back on track and having been fourth here behind Woods on his debut, he can go some way to filling the shoes of Tiger.

Last week, I wrote at length about the expectation of some out-of-the-blue performances now the PGA Tour has made the switch from west to east, and while Mitchell was nowhere near my radar, that's exactly what he produced.

Victory here for Kevin Kisner would of course be less shocking, but the point is he's another player who will expect to up his game now back on his favoured bermuda grass and that makes him a serious each-way contender here.

Kisner ought to have won this event in 2017, when I put him up at 66/1, only to make a couple of marginal mistakes on the back-nine as Marc Leishman rolled in an absurd eagle putt before holding his nerve to win by one.

That runner-up finish tells us Kisner can be effective at the course and having been 26th, 28th and 26th on his last three starts across Arizona, California and Mexico, it may be that the simple trigger of east-coast golf is enough to turn encouraging form into a third PGA Tour title.

Kisner's first came in the RSM Classic, back close to home in Georgia, and his second came in Texas. He's lost play-offs in North Carolina and Florida, at the PLAYERS, as well as that near-miss here.

In a nutshell, this is his time to shine and when last playing on the east coast, he finished seventh as one of the market leaders in the RSM Classic by coast. Yes, this is tougher, but last year's Open Championship contender has taken down big names before and 100/1 is generous.

It's all outsiders for me this week, I'm afraid, and next on the list is Talor Gooch.

Last year, on his debut in this event, Gooch fired a bogey-free 65 to sit second to Henrik Stenson after the first round, kept his head above water to lie third at halfway and sixth with a round to go, before a frustrating Sunday proved costly as he dropped to 26th.

That performance, powered by exceptional approach play, marked our cards with this return in mind and so too did last week's 20th place at the Honda Classic where, after a couple of quiet weeks, that approach play again fired.

Gooch showed with a pair of top-five finishes at the start of the year that backing up after a good week is something he does, a point underlined by his Web.com Tour win, which came just days after he'd been runner-up.

With that in mind, and only minor improvement needed from the Honda, he has to go in at a three-figure price with any wind in the favour of the man from Oklahoma.

JT Poston is close friends with Mitchell and the 25-year-old is consistently catching the eye at present, so he's one to watch closely, but I'm not sure he's done enough to be shorter than Danny Willett and it's the former Masters champion who gets the vote.

I put Willett up in Mexico, where he played nicely but holed very little, and the hope is he's another to benefit for the switch to bermuda greens.

Certainly, form figures of MC-25-33-26 on PGA Tour this year suggest that he's close to contending if the putter does begin to fire and a debut 29th here, before he became a major champion, is equally encouraging.

Willett almost won the WGC-Cadillac Championship in Florida and also has form at the Valspar, and with everything from 2017 onward basically written off he's worth giving another chance. We saw just last November that he can step up and hit the shots to win in world-class company and that counts for plenty.

Daniel Berger has doubled in price from last week despite playing solid golf and having defied a bad start here on debut to finish 14th, while it's possible to argue that Florida resident Ian Poulter is overpriced at 50/1 given the way he's started the season.

Both are considered along with Byeong Hun An and Jason Kokrak but I'm keen to take some chances here and will finish with Chesson Hadley and Ernie Els.

Hadley contended here on his 2014 debut, sitting second at halfway and fifth through 54 holes. He's since made the cut twice in as many visits, so that's 12 solid rounds of golf at a tough course.

His sole victory so far came under the Floridian conditions of Puerto Rico and top-20 finishes in two of his last three starts out on the west coast make this North Carolina man of interest.

That he was T9 in par-three performance last season also counts for something - the last five winners of this, to a man, dominated the tricky short holes - and he's in better form than was the case a year ago.

As for Els, 20th place last week sets him up nicely for an attempt to win this event for a third time, and while that appears unlikely, he'll take some inspiration from Vijay Singh's performance at the Honda.

Els himself wasn't all that far away from hitting the frame after a good start to the event, and truth be told he's played really solid golf since last August's top-three finish in Fiji.

With his short-game looking as good as it has in some time and this being his last year before he becomes eligible for the Champions Tour, Bay Hill looks the right course for a potential swansong and anything upwards of 200/1 has to be taken to small stakes.

Posted at 1145 GMT on 05/03/19.