Tour Outsider: Accenture Match Play

The US PGA Tour goes in two separate ways this week, with the big name players in Arizona to play the Accenture Match Play (the second part of the tour heads south of the border to play in Mexico; tomorrow I will post an entry for the picks of the Mayakoba Classic).

Let's look at the Golf CLi and see who the top 15 players are for the tournament ranked by the CLi figure.

Rank Player CLi 1 Tiger Woods 14.00 2 Phil Mickelson 18.80 3 Adam Scott 19.40 4 Henrik Stenson 21.50 5 Rory Sabbatini 22.70 6 Stewart Cink 24.30 7 Stuart Appleby 25.50 8 K.J. Choi 25.80 9 Nick O'Hern 26.40 10 Padraig Harrington 26.50 11 Luke Donald 27.00 12 Steve Stricker 28.40 13 Zach Johnson 29.00 14 Justin Leonard 29.20 15 Robert Allenby 29.60

As the CLi figures show, there is no player that is a for sure pick to play well....not even Tiger Woods, as all of the CLi figures are above 10. That is the case with most match play events. A player can beat the best player in the world on any given day once. It is a lot harder to beat the world's best in stroke play over 4 days as the world's best will rise to the top more often when given more chances.

So this week, I am going to go with a random crap shoot shot of the top 15 in the CLi figures....with some of my knowledge of the players no less. Hopefully that knowledge will be worth more than the peanuts I am eating.

So the Tour Outsider picks for the Accenture Match Play:

Rank Player CLi 1 Tiger Woods 14.00 2 Adam Scott 19.40 3 Rory Sabbatini 22.70 4 Stewart Cink 24.30 5 Nick O'Hern 26.40

The Tour Insider's (Dave Shedloski) picks are:

• 1 Phil Mickelson
• 2 Tiger Woods
• 3 Ernie Els
• 4 David Toms
• 5 Luke Donald

This week we have one player in common: Woods.