Tour Outsider: Puerto Rico Open

As mentioned in my previous post, this week the US PGA Tour moves to the southern tip of Florida and to Puerto Rico to play two tournaments. The first tournament this week for picks was the Puerto Rico Open. This posting is for the second tournament, which is the inaugural Puerto Rico Open.

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 S Matt Kuchar 2.75 2 S Brian Gay 4.25 3 S Alexander Cejka 5.75 4 S John Merrick 5.75 5 S Esteban Toledo 10.00 6 S Dudley Hart 10.25 7 S Paul Stankowski 10.25 8 S Joe Durant 11.75 9 S Tom Lehman 15.00 10 S Roland Thatcher 15.25 11 S Patrick Sheehan 18.50 12 S Tim Petrovic 24.75 13 S Craig Kanada 26.00 14 S Michael Sim 27.25 15 S Chris Riley 30.50

I will keep it simple this week and go with all of the top 5 players in the CLi rankings. They all have CLi rankings of 10 or below.

It should be noted, since this tournament is being played for the first time this year (inaugural), that the CLi calculation is based solely on the results of the players leading up to this tournament. There is no historical results from this specific tournament to include in the CLi calculation. So that means the ranking lists which players are playing the best leading up to this tournament. Let's hope they continue to play well this week in this new tournament.

So the Tour Outsider picks for the Puerto Rico Open are:

Rank Player CLi 1 S Matt Kuchar 2.75 2 S Brian Gay 4.25 3 S Alexander Cejka 5.75 4 S John Merrick 5.75 5 S Esteban Toledo 10.00

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

• 1 Steve Marino
• 2 Ken Duke
• 3 Ben Curtis
• 4 Joe Durant
• 5 Matt Kuchar

We have 1 player in common in this tournament: Kuchar.

It is interesting that Shedloski picked two players that have since withdrawn from the tournament: Marino and Duke. So he is already down two players before the tournament has started.

[ Note: I would have written and posted this posting for the Puerto Rico Open last night. However, I fell asleep after a long day. I went to pick up my sister from the airport yesterday and the car decided to not start once at the airport. The car decided to wait for 2 hours before starting again. It does that every 4-5 months and the mechanics can't figure it out. When ever I take it in for them to look at it, the car starts just fine. In any event, it made for a long day at the airport just waiting around. Thus, I was delayed in posting until this morning (Tuesday). ]