Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Tour Outsider: Deutsche Bank U.S. Championship

This is week the US PGA Tour starts it's Fed Ex Cup Playoff Tournaments. The first tournament in the "playoff" is the Deutsche Bank U.S. Bank Championship.

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

CLi Strength: Top 15 -15.84 | Field +2.37
Rank Player CLi
1 S Vijay Singh 7.50
2 S Carl Pettersson 14.90
3 S Sergio Garcia 15.20
4 S Phil Mickelson 16.00
5 S Jim Furyk 20.70
6 S Charlie Wi 21.50
7 S Kenny Perry 22.70
8 S Robert Allenby 22.90
9 S Jay Williamson 23.90
10 S Fredrik Jacobson 28.10
11 S Eric Axley 31.20
12 S George McNeill 31.70
13 S Briny Baird 32.90
14 S Glen Day 33.10
15 S Dean Wilson 33.60

I am going to skip over Singh this week. Yes, he is slated first in the CLi rankings list, and yes, he does have a CLi figure below 10 and I do not normally skip over players that have a CLi less than 10. However, something striking stuck out to me in Singh's results over the past 4-6 weeks. He won the Bridgestone and then proceeded to miss the cut in the next 2 events. Then he won last week at the Barclays. If that pattern continues this week, that would mean that Singh will not make the cut or at least play poorly. If this week shows that trend continuing, maybe Singh is getting a little tired and needs rest between his tournaments. Let's watch and see. Hopefully, that is not the case. I would like to see him power through the end of the season playing well.

Then I am also going to pass on Pettersson. I just don't have a good feeling of him playing well even though he did win two weeks ago in North Carolina at the Wyndham.

So continuing on with my picks, I will pick the next 4 players in the CLi list: Garcia Mickelson, Furyk and Wi. Garcia, Mickelson and Furyk are strong work horses at this event. They are almost assured to make the cut. As for Wi, he is just playing well.

For my final pick, I am going to go down to 8th place in the CLi list and pick Allenby. He has played well in this event, not finishing out of the top 20 the 4 times he has played the event. Then leading up to this tournament he has not placed outside of the top 4 in the last 30 days, which includes the last 4 tournament he has played. He has played 4 weeks straight leading up to this tournament. Hopefully he will not tire out this week.

So the Tour Outsider picks for the Deutsche Bank U.S. Championship are:

Rank Player CLi
1 S Sergio Garcia 15.20
2 S Phil Mickelson 16.00
3 S Jim Furyk 20.70
4 S Charlie Wi 21.50
5 S Robert Allenby 22.90

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

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

3 comments:

  1. Hey Johnny,

    Been busy the last few weeks, so missed adding my picks. This week, I will take Phil, Sergio, Furyk, Vijay, and Geoff Ogilvy. I know Ogilvy has had a rough stretch lately, but he has done well at this tournament in the past after struggling in prior tournaments.

    Baummer

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  2. Hey Johnny,

    Been busy the last few weeks, so missed adding my picks. This week, I will take Phil, Sergio, Furyk, Vijay, and Geoff Ogilvy. I know Ogilvy has had a rough stretch lately, but he has done well at this tournament in the past after struggling in prior tournaments.

    Baummer

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  3. Baummer, interesting that you picked Ogilvy. I do see him having the 4th lowest scoring average at this tournament in the previous 5 years (scoring avg: 68.80). And as you mentioned, he has not been playing well of late leading up to this tournament.

    So after you mentioned that you picked him, I went back and looked at how he was doing prior to his play in the Deutsche for 2003, 2004, and 2007.

    In 2007, he had placed 6th, 4th, 51st and 91st prior to placing 6th in the Deutsche in 2007. So he was playing well leading into the tournament last year.

    In 2004, he missed the cut in the Deutsche placing 71st (he missed the cut by one shot). Leading up to the tournament that year he had placed 24th, 43rd, 18th and 87th. So he was not playing well leading up to the tournament in 2004.

    Then in 2003, he placed 27th, 8th, 2nd and 97th before he placed 5th. So in 2003, he was playing well leading up to the tournament as well.

    With that data, I would be hard pressed to pick Ogivily this week. Let's see if the pattern I pointed out above will stay try this year (i.e. he won't play well this year), or if he breaks that pattern (i.e. he plays well).

    - JM

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