Tour Outsider: PGA Championship

This week offers up the final major of the year. All tours around the world will look to Detroit, Michigan to see how their players will fair in the US PGA Championship.

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 Kenny Perry 11.80 2 S Ken Duke 13.75 3 S Vijay Singh 16.60 4 S Chad Campbell 19.20 5 S Hunter Mahan 21.15 6 S Tommy Armour III 22.55 7 S Phil Mickelson 23.75 8 S Anthony Kim 23.95 9 S Stewart Cink 24.75 10 S Briny Baird 29.90 11 S Heath Slocum 31.15 12 S Robert Karlsson 31.85 13 S Graeme McDowell 33.20 14 S Lee Westwood 33.45 15 S Robert Allenby 34.45

In looking at the Golf CLi rankings, this is a tough pick this week.

Kenny Perry is first in the list, and has been playing well lately. However, I think he is tired out and has already accomplished his goal of making the Ryder Cup team. And he does play well at PGA Championship venues. However, since he is tired both physically and mentally, I am going to pass on him.

Then you have Ken Duke showing up second in the Golf CLi rankings. He played well in his first PGA Championship last year (placed 18th) and has placed no higher than 18th in this past 3 starts. However, he doesn't have much experience in majors, having only played in 3 of them (2007 PGA Championship, 2007 and 2006 U.S. Open Championships). So, I am going to pass over Duke as well.

I don't normally pass over the first player, much less the first two players, in the Golf CLi rankings. So, it will be interesting to see if that hurts me when looking at the results come next Monday.

I will then pick the next 3 players in the list: Singh (who won last week at Bridgestone), Campbell (who plays well at the PGA and is playing well of late), and Mahan. Out of these 3, Mahan is the one that is a question mark for most. He doesn't have a lot of experience in majors, but he is playing well of late and has a very solid head on his shoulders. Hopefully, he will use his head and be patient this week to make a strong showing.

For my 4th pick, I need to pick Mickelson. He is the highest ranked player in the field, and without Tiger in the field, he looks to capitalize on adding another major to his resume.

For my final pick, I am going to go all the way down to the 15th spot and pick Allenby. There is not much difference in the CLi figures for the players ranked 10th through 15th in the CLi rankings. So the CLi is saying that those players all have around the same probability of playing well this week (i.e. placing 35th or better in this case).

So the Tour Outsider picks for the PGA Championship are:

Rank Player CLi 1 S Vijay Singh 16.60 2 S Chad Campbell 19.20 3 S Hunter Mahan 21.15 4 S Phil Mickelson 23.75 5 S Robert Allenby 34.45

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

• 1 Phil Mickelson
• 2 Vijay Singh
• 3 Jim Furyk
• 4 Padraig Harrington
• 5 Davis Love III

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