In the quarter century since the old Florida Citrus Open moved across town from Orlando’s Rio Pinar Country Club to Arnie’s Bay Hill Club, the Bay Hill Invitational has been a special week on the PGA Tour calendar. While any other tournament that was played so close to the Tour Players Championship - the week before the so-called “fifth major,” to be exact - might have trouble attracting a respectable field, Bay Hill has longed boasted one of the strongest fields of any tournament outside of the Majors. That arguably could be due to a shrewd move by Bay Hill back in 1984 to shift to elite invitational status, which allows the participation of top international players or because of the tournament’s proximity to Disney World, which allows the pros with families to turn the week into a working vacation. Or it could simply reflect the desire of the game’s best players to pay their respects to the man who many feel helped put pro golf on the map in the 1960s - and who remains a role model for the next generation of tour pros. “I tell every young player, if you want to emulate someone, you should emulate Arnold Palmer,” Mark O’Meara told reporters on the eve of the Bay Hill. “The way he is with fans, the media, with people. The guy is classy. He is incredible.”

But the Bay Hill Invitational is more than a stroll down memory lane. As a spectator event, the tournament has had its share of memorable performances, most notably Ben Crenshaw’s putting display in 1993 - when the Texan completed the Saturday and Sunday rounds with just 50 putts combined - and, a few years earlier, Robert Gamez’s dramatic eagle on the closing hole in 1990 that enabled him to snatch victory away from Greg Norman by a single stroke (a plaque still marks the spot from which Gamez holed out his 7-iron on the 18th fairway.) And as tournament organizers prepared for this year’s Invitational, the question was whether Tiger Woods, who had captured the prior four Bay Hill Invitationals, would achieve a feat that not even Sarazen, Hagen or even a man named Palmer had ever achieved - win the same tour event five straight years. And going into this year’s Bay Hill, even Woods was aware of the task ahead of him. “It would be one heck of an accomplishment to be able to do something no one’s ever done,” Woods told reporters on the eve of the tournament. “It doesn’t happen very often that you get to do something no one has ever done before, and I’ve done it a few times in my career.”

That the Bay Hill would become the staging ground for such a historical feat is remarkable given the club’s humble origins as nothing more than a getaway club for a group of businessmen from Nashville. Palmer himself first laid eyes on the Dick Wilson course back in 1965 when he was invited to play an exhibition against Jack Nicklaus (which Palmer won). The biggest attraction was its remote location. So remote that course designer David Harman recalls that on his first visit to Bay Hill he finally had to drive back to a gas station and ask, “Where in God’s name is this place?” Recalls Harmon: “It was wilderness, nothing but citrus groves. But Arnie loved it. He could come here and play golf and just be by himself.” Indeed, so smitten was Palmer with Bay Hill that he has recalled racing home to tell his wife Winnie, “Babe, I’ve just played the best course in Florida, and I want to own it.” But purchasing Bay Hill was easier said than done, even for a man who was the most prominent golfer of his time. Those 12 or so businessmen who owned the club were loathe to sell, and it took Palmer the next several years just to negotiate a five-year lease with an option to buy. What’s more, Palmer’s original vision of Bay Hill as an isolated retreat was forever altered when a year into his lease, he picked up the Orlando newspaper one morning to discover that Walt Disney had purchased 27,000 acres near Bay Hill for construction of a theme park. While Arnie’s friends quickly called to congratulate him on his dumb luck, Palmer was despondent. “I was really depressed as blazes by the news,” Palmer later recalled. “Gone forever would be my quiet little corner of Florida, my private practice Eden of birds and birdies.” Palmer would get another surprise in 1974 when the owners from whom he was still leasing the course struck a deal to sell the property to another bidder. Palmer appealed directly to the new buyer - a CEO who agreed to sell Bay Hill back to Palmer - albeit at a price that was slightly more than Palmer had counted on paying.

But after a decade, Bay Hill finally belonged to Arnie, and it wouldn’t be too long before Palmer would be itching to share Bay Hill with the world. In 1976, Palmer got a call from an Orlando businessman, Frank Hubbard, who was worried that the Orlando stop on the PGA Tour, the Citrus Open held at the nearby Rio Pinar club, was losing its steam. Hubbard asked Palmer whether he’d be willing to host the tournament, and Palmer jumped at the chance. Three years later, the Bay Hill Invitational was born with a purse of $250,000 (by comparison, this year’s Bay Hill paid out $5 million.)

Over the years, Palmer has remade Bay Hill to reflect his own style and taste. Even today, in an era in which golf course design has been overwrought with man-made artifices and the surrounding communities are filled with McMansions, Bay Hill is like its owner - unpretentious, lined with modest patio homes that like Arnie himself, are aging gracefully. While much of Bay Hill seems to hark back to a simpler era, there is one element, though, that Palmer has worked tirelessly to make modern and relevant - the courses. With today’s players wielding longer-hitting clubs, Palmer and design partner Ed Seay have worked feverishly over the years to make sure that the Bay Hill Invitational remains a stiff test for today’s touring pros. Since 1965, Palmer has, year in and year out, nipped, tucked and tweaked the course to improve not only its playability but also its appearance. The lake guarding the 18th hole was once bordered by grass, and then bulkheads, but is now buttressed by a rock wall. And though the terrain is as flat your other Florida courses, Palmer created more depth by adding mounds, humps and elevated and depressed bunkers.

But the biggest changes came after the 1989 Bay Hill Invitational. Palmer closed the course and converted the first hole to a par four, the fourth and 16th holes to par fives. But there was a method to the madness: By converting two holes from par fives to fours, Palmer was able to effectively toughen the course without adding yardage. But by converting No. 16 into a par five, Palmer effectively addressed his own concerns that the finishing holes had become too difficult and that the lack of reasonable birdie opportunities on the final four holes meant that the Bay Hill Invitational was often over on Sunday after the 14th hole. Often, the leader board only saw changes when players self-destructed, and not when they made a late charge. “In the late 1980s, we had a run where the leaders got through No. 14, and nothing happened the rest of the way,” recalls Palmer’s long-time design partner, Ed Seay. “There were no birdies on 15 through 18, so the tournament was over. That was behind Arnie’s thinking in changing No. 16 into a par five.”

As a result of Arnie’s tinkering, today Bay Hill offers some of the toughest holes on the PGA Tour. For all the notoriety of No. 17 at the TPC at Sawgrass - the dreaded island hole - the dirty secret is that the average scores are slightly higher at No. 17 at Bay Hill, another watery par three. The first challenge comes at No. 6, a 558-yard par five that curls around a lake. Daring players who cut the corner expertly can card a birdie or even the occasional eagle, but the hole is notorious for devouring players who get too aggressive. Case in point: The 1998 Bay Hill Invitational, when John Daly, who was two-under-par for the tournament, launched six balls into the water and carded an 18. After his first drive splashed in the lake, Daly advanced to the forward tees and tried to cut off even more of the dogleg, a shot that required a 300 yard carry. “He annihilated it. It was right on line, it just didn’t carry,” his playing partner, Paul Goydos, would say afterwards. So Daly tried the shot again - with the same results. With his third ball in the water, the gallery began hollering, “Tin Cup,” referring to the movie where actor Kevin Costner played a hapless driving range owner who blew his chance in win the US Open by splashing ball after ball into a pond on the 18th hole. Finally, Daly’s seventh shot cleared the water, but plugged in the hazard-forcing him to take a drop. His 6-iron approach landed in the rocks, but bounced into a greenside bunker. Daly splashed out, two putted-and carded an 18. But the ultimate test may be No. 18, a 441-yard par four that plays into a green that wraps behind a gaping lake known as the Devil’s Bathtub. Many tour pros have seen their dreams of victory crushed here on Sundays, and Arnie has continued to tweak the hole to make sure it remains a stiff test - in recent years reshaping some of the mounding behind the right side of the green, making the Sunday pin position on the right side much more difficult to get close to for birdie. But it was here that Gamez laced his 7-iron straight into the cup to slip by Norman and take away the distinctive Scottish handcrafted sword that Palmer bestows upon winners. Of course, tour pros are a notoriously whiny lot, and Palmer’s relentless tinkering and toughening has led to complaints from the pros that the 7,239-yard course has become too long, the fairways too squishy, and the resodded greens so hard that even the best approach shots bounded off and into the rough. While the tournament still draws the big-name players like Woods and Phil Mickelson, some of the shorter hitters like Fred Funk, David Toms, Chris DiMarco and Paul Azinger have begun sitting out the Bay Hill in recent years. “It’s not a great golf course anymore and the way it’s set up is what steers the players off. Bay Hill is a different course that requires a certain style, and it just ain’t my style, bro,” Azinger told a reporter before this year’s Bay Hill Invitational. Funk was similarly blunt in his assessment of Bay Hill. “It needs to be blown up and started all over again,” Funk said before the tournament. “It was pretty good before. He (Palmer) tweaks and tweaks and tweaks, and all of a sudden, he’s got a monster.” Such criticisms, as might be expected, don’t sit well with other tour pros like Peter Jacobsen, who used the pro-am dinner to chide those tour pros who sat out the Bay Hill. Nor did it play well with Palmer, who afterwards admonished the pros to quit beefing and just play. Palmer’s argument: Tournament purses have grown exponentially, and the pros should be expected to earn those big dollars by playing something more than a bunch of push-over courses. “Just think about it - 26 years ago we started with $100,000 (in purse money), and this year it was $5 million. Can you imagine the pros then wanting to complain about that?” Palmer said the day after this year’s Bay Hill.

And in the end, this year’s Bay Hill Invitational turned out to play not as tough as years before. For one, the resodded greens had now taken root and were softening up. And a heavy rainstorm earlier in the week dumped an inchand- a-half of water on the greens, helping to soften them up. But when the tournament began on Thursday, it looked like it would play out with the same results as in earlier years: Woods got off to a solid start by missing only one fairway in a round of 5-under 67 that left him one shot out of the lead. But even Woods was wary about declaring the tournament over. “I haven’t won yet,” he protested to reporters afterwards. “Hopefully, I have a chance this year. I’ve set myself up. I have three more rounds - a long way to go.”

And, indeed, Woods had further to go than he realized, because the reigning champ began to fade on Friday just as Japanese star Shigeki Maruyama made his run atop the leader board. But it was Palmer himself who made the shot of the tournament on Friday. After a strong drive on No. 18, Palmer pulled his driver out again on the fairway and roped it up the green to about 30 feet from the flag. And while Arnie missed his birdie putt, his playing partner Chad Campbell was duly impressed with Palmer’s par on 18, which enabled the King to break 80 for the first time at his tournament in three years. “He’s still got some game,” Campbell said afterwards. “Playing with him was so awesome,” Campbell said. “It was really an inspiration.”

But the weekend at Bay Hill would belong to Campbell, a soft-spoken Texan who made a charge on leader Stuart Appleby that was reminiscent of one of Palmer’s great comebacks. Trailing four shots behind Appleby after seven holes on Sunday, Campbell played flawlessly down the stretch shooting a bogey-free, final-round 66 at Bay Hill while Appleby faded with a four-overpar 76, a turnaround that reminded some spectators of Greg Norman’s collapse at the 1996 Masters. “I really screwed up the back nine,” Appleby lamented afterwards. “Chad just kept making every putt. I was trying to ignore that and continue to do what I needed to do but he outplayed me, no two ways about that.”

So Woods’ streak was broken, and the Bay Hill Invitational will enter 2005 with a new defending champion for the first time in five years. Even more significantly, it will also likely be the first Bay Hill Invitational in history in which Palmer himself doesn’t tee it up. Arnie tried to retire from the Bay Hill a couple of years ago, but agreed to play the 2004 tournament as a favor to new sponsor MasterCard. But for all the change - Woods’ no longer the defending champ, Palmer no longer in the field - one thing will remain the same: Arnie will remain the host, and the Bay Hill will remain Arnie’s house party.