Tour Outsider: Barclays Classic

This is week the US PGA Tour starts it's Fed Ex Cup Playoff Tournaments. The first tournament in the "playoff" is the Barclays 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 S Rich Beem 10.90 2 S Padraig Harrington 11.35 3 S Sergio Garcia 18.00 4 S Phil Mickelson 19.30 5 S Brian Davis 24.55 6 S Vijay Singh 28.60 7 S Carl Pettersson 30.15 8 S Steve Flesch 30.35 9 S Jim Furyk 30.85 10 S Camilo Villegas 32.60 11 S Ian Poulter 33.25 12 S Retief Goosen 34.25 13 S Stuart Appleby 34.30 14 S Billy Mayfair 36.15 15 S Tim Clark 38.05

The first thing I noticed in the CLi rankings for this tournament is that no player has a CLi figure of less than 10. This basically tells me that the CLi does not think that any one player has a very high chance of a guaranteeing a top 10. That is not a good sign when I am using the CLi to pick which players will play well this week. That said, let's start picking.

With the CLi figures being higher than normal, I am going to pick across the board.

I am going to pass on Beem, pick Harrington, Garcia and Mickelson. Harrington won the British two weeks ago, Garcia came in second and Mickelson likes to be on the big stage at the Barclays.

Then I am going down the list to pick Furyk and Appleby. Furyk likes playing in New York, especially when the venue is close to New York City. Appleby is just a strong competitor and should guarantee me a player that will make the cut. Hopefully he will do even better than just making the cut.

So the Tour Outsider picks for the Barclays Classic are:

Rank Player CLi 1 S Padraig Harrington 11.35 2 S Sergio Garcia 18.00 3 S Phil Mickelson 19.30 4 S Jim Furyk 30.85 5 S Stuart Appleby 34.30

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

• 1 Phil Mickelson
• 2 Jim Furyk
• 3 Steve Stricker
• 4 Justin Leonard
• 5 Justin Rose

We have 2 players in common in this tournament: Mickelson and Furyk.