Tour Outsider: Tour Championship

This is week is the last tournament in the Fed Ex Cup Playoff series. The tournament, Tour Championship, is being played in Atlanta and is only being contested by 30 players --- the top 30 players in the Fed Ex standings.

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 Camilo Villegas 2.70 2 S Vijay Singh 3.15 3 S Jim Furyk 3.30 4 S Hunter Mahan 5.05 5 S Sergio Garcia 5.45 6 S Tim Clark 7.40 7 S Steve Stricker 7.75 8 S Mike Weir 10.10 9 S Ernie Els 11.35 10 S Carl Pettersson 12.10 11 S Chad Campbell 13.05 12 S Briny Baird 13.65 13 S Justin Leonard 13.80 14 S Ben Curtis 14.10 15 S Phil Mickelson 14.85

All 15 picks look good for this tournament. That should be the case as the field consists of the top 30 players that are playing the best on tour leading into this event.

I am going to trust the CLi rankings and go with the top 5 players. Villegas, Singh, Furyk, Mahan and Garcia all look good. The only issue would be if Furyk, Mahan and Garcia are worn out from the festival that took place here in Louisville last week (the Ryder Cup). Hopefully not, and hopefully the energy from the Ryder Cup follows them to Atlanta.

On a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if Els plays well this week...as he usually plays well at East Lake and he is rested up.

If I do poorly this week, then something is wrong as it usually is easier to make picks in a smaller field per se. This week it is only 30 players

So the Tour Outsider picks for the Tour Championship are:

Rank Player CLi 1 S Camilo Villegas 2.70 2 S Vijay Singh 3.15 3 S Jim Furyk 3.30 4 S Hunter Mahan 5.05 5 S Sergio Garcia 5.45

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

• 1 Vijay Singh
• 2 Sergio Garcia
• 3 Jim Furyk
• 4 Camilo Villegas
• 5 Chad Campbell

We have 4 players in common in this tournament: Singh, Garcia, Furyk, and Villegas. Hmmmmm....the difference maker will be Campbell (Insider) and Mahan (Outside). Come on Hunter!!!! (maybe I should have picked more experience for the difference maker--- i.e. Els? hopefully, youth and excurbence will be the difference in this case)