Shell Houston Open

This week the US PGA Tour takes a jump from the east coast to the southwest (Texas) to play the Shell Houston Open. It is the last tournament before the Masters, and any player not already in the Masters' field will earn an invitation to the tournament. So there is some urgency in the air in Houston for those players seeking to get into the first major of the year.

Rank Player CLi 1 S Steve Stricker 6.75 2 S Phil Mickelson 10.50 3 S Geoff Ogilvy 12.05 4 S Charley Hoffman * 16.50 5 S K.J. Choi 20.85 6 S Mathew Goggin 24.20 7 S Padraig Harrington 26.65 8 S Kevin Na * 27.45 9 S Hunter Mahan 27.55 10 S Jeffrey Overton * 27.55 11 S Ben Crane * 28.15 12 S Anthony Kim 28.35 13 S Charles Howell III * 29.80 14 S Davis Love III * 30.75 15 S Bo Van Pelt * 31.50

* - denotes players that are not in the Masters field at this time (before the start of the Shell Houston Open).

Only one player has a CLi figure below 10. So this means that it will be another tough tournament to pick which players will play well as there is no clear support in the data which players will play well this week.

I opened this blog saying there was some urgency for players not already in the Masters to play well this week. Almost half of the players in the top 15 in the CLi rankings (7 players) are not in the Masters field. So in picking players this week I will take that into consideration.

The top 5 players in the CLi rankings all look good. I was going to drop one of them if all 5 were in the Masters field. However, Hoffman is in the top 5 in the CLi rankings and is not in the Masters field. So that means I can go with the top 5 and have 4 players that are in the Masters field and 1 that is not. Maybe Hoffman will pull out a victory to earn an invitation to the Masters next week.

Note: Urgency can be a negative, as it makes some players push too much. So the urgency arguement could be turned around and used as a deterrent to playing well down the stretch. When watching this tournament let's see which players use urgency to their advantage, and which ones "over use" it in a fashion that it hurts their chances of playing well

Below are my 5 picks for the Shell Houston Open:

Rank Player CLi 1 S Steve Stricker 6.75 2 S Phil Mickelson 10.50 3 S Geoff Ogilvy 12.05 4 S Charley Hoffman * 16.50 5 S K.J. Choi 20.85

Next week is the Masters, the first major of the year. Since the field for the Masters is already in place except for one player (the winner of the Shell Houston Open), the field has already been entered into the GolfInvestors system. So you can take a look at the current field analysis at this time to get a head start on analyzing the Masters' field.