Scots Martin Laird and Robert MacIntyre have been strangely dropped from the entry list teeing-up in this week’s historic $20m Arnold Palmer Invitational at the Bay Hill club in Orlando.
MacIntyre is now based just two miles from the host this week’s Florida course but instead he’s driven past the Bay Hill turnoff on route to the airport and joins Laird in this week’s Tour sanctioned event over 1,100 miles away in Puerto Rico.
The current World No. 68 MacIntyre arrived on the Caribbean island to also find himself the top-ranked in the $US 4m Tour sanctioned Puerto Rico field.
Teeing-up as well in Puerto Rico is Scot Russell Knox and making his PGA Tour debut this year after losing his main tour card last season.
Scottish trio – Robert MacInthyre, Martin Laird and Russell Knox – photographed by @TourMiss in 2022 at the Genesis Invitational
Laird is a former winner of Arnie’s event, being handed the trophy by Palmer in 2011 and five years before Palmer passed away. The Denver-based Scot has played the event every year since, with the exception of 2019 and ’20 but not this year under the new rules governing the ‘Signature’ event.
That said both Laird and MacIntyre were listed in the Bay Hill field of just 70 players from late on Friday night (UK time) and right-up to Monday am (UK time), and with a PGA Tour official confirming ‘yes’ to the Daily Record late on Sunday when asked via an email if MacIntyre was still in the Palmer field despite also being down to compete in Puerto Rico.
However there’s been controversy from within the Tour over this week’s Arnold Palmer field after it was advised Aussie Adam Scott and Webb Simpson were afforded sponsor invitations into the event, and with both members of the Players Advisory Board. It is a third ‘Signature’ event this year Scott has been given an invitation and Simpson’s second.
News of the invitations prompted American golfer Dylan Wu to write on his ‘X’ account: “Great players and major champions. I can’t say much because I missed the cut hard this week but getting more than one sponsor exemption into elevated events doesn’t seem fair.
“Seems like if you’re a player director, you’ll get an invite into an elevated event. Seems suspect”
Wu then added in a follow-up tweet: “Sponsor exemptions going to the same players every elevated event doesn’t seem to follow the ‘play better’ saying. Seems like ‘be more famous’ or ‘know the right people.’”
Two other players offered a Palmer start include MacIntyre’s winning Rome Ryder Cup team-mates Shane Lowry and Nicolai Hojgaard.
In January, Scott, Simpson and Peter Malnati all received exemptions into the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. While Scott was fairly close to being in the Top 50 of last year’s FedEx Cup standings — which would have gotten him into all of the Signature Events — and is within the top 50 players in the world, Simpson and Malnati are less in form.
Simpson is currently ranked 235th in the Official World Golf Ranking and Malnati is 226th and hasn’t made a cut outside of the no-cut AT&T Pebble Beach when he finished T14.
Will Zalatoris, Maverick McNealy and Tiger Woods are the only other three players to get sponsors exemptions into Signature Events this year.
There’s already been unrest in the Tour rank over the PGA Tour’s new Signature Event model claim the system rewards golfers playing well through the Aon Swing 5 and Aon Next 10 — the top 10 players in the FedEx Cup standings who are not otherwise qualified for Signature Events, but some players have still struggled to understand how to qualify for them.
