Barclays Classic

This week the US PGA Tour begins it's playoff season beginning in New York with the Barclays Classic.

Below is the list of the top 15 players in the CLi rankings for the Barclays Classic.

#	Player	CLi
1	Jason Bohn	15.40
2	Steve Stricker	21.40
3	Sergio Garcia	22.75
4	Hunter Mahan	31.05
5	Ernie Els	31.50
6	Ryan Moore	31.50
7	Tim Herron	31.85
8	Bill Haas	32.10
9	Padraig Harrington	32.45
10	Justin Rose	35.35
11	Zach Johnson	35.65
12	Jerry Kelly	36.05
13	John Senden	36.05
14	Fred Couples	36.10
15	John Rollins	37.30

With the Barclays playing on a different course for the first time, it is difficult to see how past performance in this tournament will help the players. As you will see in the CLi configuration at the end of this posting, I have accounted for that by lowering the weight of the importance for past results in this tournament. I didn't lower it to 0%, as I still think there is some residual left over with the tournament being part of the playoffs and player's mental as such. So have kept a 30% (15% + 15%) weight on the past results for the tournament in place. That said, the CLi results above reflect that configuration. You will see that the CLi figures are high. This means the CLi is not able to determine a clear cut group of favorite players to play well.

As for my picks, I am going to skip around a little and not stick with the top 5 players. My 5 picks are Bohn, Garcia, Els, Harrington, and Johnson. Garcia, Els, Harrington and Johnson are safety picks. Bohn is the suspect pick. However, the CLi showed him on the top of the list and his CLi is 6 points lower than the 2nd player in the list. He did play well at the Wyndham last week. So I decided to take a chance on him this week.

As for Els, if he keeps hitting it the way he has been of late, it will be up to his putter to make the difference.

Below are my 5 picks for the Barclays Classic:

#	Player	CLi
1	Jason Bohn	15.40
2	Sergio Garcia	22.75
3	Ernie Els	31.50
4	Padraig Harrington	32.45
5	Zach Johnson	35.65

Below are the settings for the CLi calculation I used for the Barclays Classic:

Number of Past Tournaments Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA1)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA1)
5	15%	15%
Number of Days Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA2)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA2)
30	15%	15%
Number of Tournaments Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA3)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA3)
4	20%	20%