The 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational begins Thursday, March 5, with the opening round at Bay Hill in Orlando, Fla. You can find the full Arnold Palmer Invitational schedules for Thursday’s first round at the bottom of this post.
Separate training time for round 1
Heading into Thursday’s opening round at Arnold Palmer, world no.2 Rory McIlroy has played just two PGA Tour events so far this year. But in that short time, the five-time major champion has proven he still has his best game.
In his first start at Pebble Beach, McIlroy shook off the rust with a T14 finish a year after lifting the trophy. Then he took another step in the right direction in his most recent start at the Genesis Invitational, where he finished T2 to take home $1.8 million.
McIlroy has played the Arnold Palmer Invitational 11 times in his career. He won in 2018, but he’s had plenty of success outside of that year, including a runner-up finish in 2023 and six top 10s overall.
McIlroy tees off for the opening round on Thursday at 1:30pm ET with partner Viktor Hovland.
You can watch Thursday’s first round of the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational from 2-6pm ET on Golf Channel. PGA Tour live on ESPN+ will offer exclusive early broadcast coverage beginning Thursday at 7:30 a.m. ET, in addition to coverage of featured sets and holes.
See the preliminaries and complete first-round pairings for the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
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2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational Pool Times for Thursday: Round 1 (ET)
Tea no. 1
7:40 – Joel Dahmen, Daniel Bennett
7:50 – Jonathan Vegas, Tom Hoge
08:00 – Ryan Fox, Billy Horschel
08:10 – Brian Campbell, Patrick Rodgers
08:20 – Matt McCarty, Max Greyserman
08:30 – Taylor Moore, Andrew Putnam
08:40 – Daniel Berger, Alex Noren
08:50 – Min Woo Lee, Michael Thorbjornsen
9:05 – Harry Hall, Corey Conners
09:15 – Cameron Young, Sepp Straka
9:25 – Harris English, Patrick Cantlay
9:35 – Andrew Novak, Robert MacIntyre
9:45 – Brian Harman, Akshay Bhatia
9:55 – Collin Morikawa, Justin Rose
10:05 – Xander Schauffele, Shane Lowry
10:20 – Scottie Scheffler, Russell Henley
10:30 – Aldrich Potgieter, Adam Scott
10:40 – JT Poston, Keith Mitchell
10:50 – Nicolai Højgaard, Austin Smotherman
11:00 a.m. – Si Woo Kim, Bud Cauley
11:10 – Lucas Glover, Ryo Hisatsune
11:20 – Ryan Gerard, Jason Day
11:35 – Taylor Pendrith, Denny McCarthy
11:45 – Kurt Kitayama, Pierceson Coody
11:55 – Jordan Spieth, Sam Stevens
12:05pm – Jake Knapp, Matt Fitzpatrick
12:15pm – Sam Burns, Sungjae Im
12:25pm – JJ Spaun, Nick Taylor
12:35pm – Keegan Bradley, Maverick McNealy
12.50pm – Ben Griffin, Tommy Fleetwood
13:00 – Nico Echavarria, Ludvig Åberg
1:10pm – Jacob Bridgeman, Chris Gotterup
1:20pm – Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama
1:30pm – Rory McIlroy, Victor Hovland
1:40pm – Rickie Fowler, Michael Kim
1:50pm – Chris Kirk, Sahith Theegala
