This week the US PGA Tour is moving to the west coast to play the second major of the year. We will see Torrey Pines host the U.S. Open Championship. Torrey Pines will play different than it has during the regular season event, the Buick Invitational.
Let's look at the Golf CLi and see who the top 15 players are for the tournament ranked by the CLi figure.
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The cream rises to the top. That is the case with the Golf CLi rankings this week with all of the strong veteran players in the top 10. The two exceptions would be Tiger Woods and Anthony Kim. Woods is not in the top 10 (he is 15th) and Kim is not a veteran but is in the top 10. It will be interesting to see how Woods does after his knee surgery and how Kim does being a young buck.
This week I am going to go with the top 2 (Mickelson and Singh), skip over Kim, grab Garcia, skip over Leonard, and pick Cink and Ogilvy.
Mickelson knows Torrey Pines like the back of his hand having grown up in San Diego. He currently lives within 30 minutes of the course. Singh had been nursing an injury, but has seen his play improve as he gets over the injury. Garcia has been very consistent the last couple of months. As well, it helps that he won the Players Championship last month. That will give him some confidence in a major type of tournament. Cink and Ogilvy are very consistent in majors, especially on hard courses.
As for passing over Kim, I just don't feel comfortable in picking him with little experience in the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open is just a different animal than other tournaments. He might play well, but he could be very well shoot a high score in the first round and have no chance making the cut after that. And for passing over Leonard, he did win last week at the Stanford St. Jude Championship and is playing well. However, many players don't play well in the U.S. Open when they have won the week before. Therefore, I passed over him.
Then there is the reasoning for passing over Tiger Woods. It is very hard to not pick Woods in any tournament. But the CLi doesn't project him finishing higher than 32nd. He is 15th in the CLi rankings, but his CLi is 32. He has finished 1st twice and 2nd twice in the past 7 years. However, the knee surgery is a question mark and this pushes his CLi ranking down. He could play well the first couple of days, but the strain on his knee in the U.S. Open environment could tire him out in the 3rd round.
So the Tour Outsider picks for the U.S. Open Championship are:
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The Tour Insider's (Dave Shedloski) picks are:
We have 3 players in common in this tournament: Garcia, Mickelson and Ogilvy.
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