Golfer "under" to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational 2023

This year's Arnold Palmer Invitational gathered nearly all of the world's top 50 (OWGR table) to compete for a prize fund of 20 million USD, closing the curtain on the morning of March 6, Hanoi time.

When entering the tournament, Kitayama placed 46th OWGR and was without a cup after 86 attempts on the PGA Tour. But he kept the top of the table after round 2, at -9 and then maintained both position and score at the end of round 3.

The finish line, Kitayama lost the first place because of the triple bogey of the 9th hole, after playing over the field. That "tunnel collapse" opened the door for Rory McIlroy, defending champion Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Tyrrell Hatton, and Harris English. All of these groups have owned majors or won championships in the US first-class golf arena.

However, no one took the opportunity. According to the distribution of entry from hole 1, Spieth went first, two holes away from McIlroy and English while Scheffler and Hatton were in the penultimate group and Kitayama in the last.

Spieth went from -5 at the top of the round to -10 on a birdie on the 13th. Spieth, though, finished -7 on three bogeys in the remaining five holes. All three bogeys came from putting the ball within 2.4 meters of the hole.

Meanwhile, McIlroy also birdie on hole 13 to go -9, but bogey the next two holes. On hole 16, he birdie again to reach -8. After holding par on the penultimate hole, McIlroy went to the green on the 18th and added a birdie from a putter three meters from the hole. But he only kept par because the first putt went right and ended up at -8.

English did not bogey from the beginning of the game, reached -7 on the 14th hole, went to -8 on the 16th hole and couldn't get any deeper at the end of the last two holes like his teammate McIlroy.

Scheffler leveled English on the 16th hole, eventually coming in at -7 due to a bogey on the 18th. There, he hit a second shot right on the edge of the green, but the ball bounced back into the rough. That location is about six meters from the hole. Scheffler lacks force when the chip enters, two more wipers are done.

And Hatton, after reaching -8 at the 16th hole, dropped to -7 on the penultimate hole, thereby becoming the final score.

And Kitayama, after triple bogey on hole 9, kept the par sequence all the way to hole 16. He birdie on hole 17, nearly four meters away to go -9.

Hole 18, Kitayama hit the thick rough on the left side of the fairway, still making it to the green on the second shot, 14.5 meters from the flag. From there, he just needed to put the ball near the hole to keep par and then win. The first slip brought it close to the target's mouth, causing Kitayama to miss the -10 mark regretfully.

After finishing with a -9 victory, Kitayama took the cup with $3.6 million. McIlroy and English finished T2 (-8), with the same bonus of 1.78 million USD while Scheffler, Spieth, Hatton all received 800,000 USD for T4 (-7).

"I suddenly lost the first place on the 9th hole and had to fight really hard to get this result. I'm proud of that," Kitayama said during the award ceremony.

The Arnold Palmer Invitational 2023 championship helped him move up 27 places, to 19th in the world. After this tournament, the order of the top 3 OWGR from the top remained unchanged, including Jon Rahm, Scheffler, McIlroy respectively.