British Open

The US PGA Tour heads overseas to play the 3rd major of the year: British Open. This year's British Open is being held at Turnberry 3 times prior to this year: 1977, 1986, 1994. Tom Watson won it in 1997 in a duel over Jack Nicklaus. Greg Norman won it in 1986 with superb 63 in the 2nd round. Nick Price won it in 1994 to cap off his superior playing in the early 1990s.

Below is the list of the top 15 players in the CLi rankings for the British Open.

#	Player	CLi
1	Tiger Woods	2.30
2	Steve Stricker	7.95
3	Jim Furyk	10.00
4	Hunter Mahan	12.25
5	Kenny Perry	16.35
6	Retief Goosen	20.10
7	Ian Poulter	20.10
8	Vijay Singh	23.60
9	Anthony Kim	23.75
10	Mike Weir	29.45
11	Justin Leonard	33.10
12	Sergio Garcia	33.15
13	Richard Green	33.25
14	Lee Westwood	33.60
15	Lucas Glover	34.10

The British Open tends to be a hard tournament to predict. I have not done so well in the past in making picks for this tournament. Nor, do I think that others have as well. It is basically a difficult tournament to predict who will play well as there are soo many different elements involved with the British Open venues. But unpredictability is what golf should be about. Golf shouldn't be about predictability. If golf is fully predictable, then it would not be fun. Part of the fun of golf as a player and a fan is the uncertain element that engulfs the game. Each player wants to try to minimize uncertainty. However, uncertainty is tough to minimize and to measure.

My goal in creating and using the Golf CLi is to see if there are any patterns in the results (i.e. to see if there is any predictability). If there is any predictability, let's see if the Golf CLi calculation will figure it out. That said, it is now time for me to make my 5 picks.

I am going to go with the top 3 players in the CLi rankings: Woods, Stricker, and Furyk. Then I am going to skip Mahan and Perry. Mahan doesn't seem to have the experience in the British Open that I like. As for Perry, even though I am living in Kentucky now and would like to see Perry win, I just don't see him being able to brave ALL the elements that the British Open throws at a player. Then I am going to pick Goosen and Poulter.

Below are my 5 picks for the British Open:

#	Player	CLi
1	Tiger Woods	2.30
2	Steve Stricker	7.95
3	Jim Furyk	10.00
4	Retief Goosen	20.10
5	Ian Poulter	20.10

As mentioned in my post earlier today, my buddy, Paul Ginn, is going to make picks against the CLi and me over the next 5 weeks (7 tournaments). He is skeptical of the CLi, so let's see if he is right or not.

Below are Paul Ginn's 5 picks for the British Open:

#	Player
1	Tiger Woods
2	Tim Clark
3	Sergio Garcia
4	Geoff Ogilvy
5	Padraig Harrington

Paul and I have only one player in common: Woods. So it should be interesting to see who will fair better at Turnberry.

Also as mentioned in a previous post today, I am starting to use the custom Golf CLi calculation from the Golf CLi site as opposed to the general Golf CLi calculation on GolfInvestors. Below are the settings for the CLi calculation I used for the British Open:

Number of Past Tournaments Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA1)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA1)
5	25%	25%
Number of Days Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA2)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA2)
60	5%	5%
Number of Tournaments Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA3)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA3)
6	20%	20%