Northern Trust Open

This week the US PGA Tour is just north of Los Angeles in Pacific Palisades to play the Northern Trust Open. The tournament is held at the famous Riveria Country Club.

This week I introduce the Tour Outsider vs Tour Insider again [ hat tip to Mr. Ed Cushing on pushing me on this one ]. So for the remainder of the year I will post my picks against pgatour.com's Rob Bolton. Even though he is not titled "Tour Insider" by pgatour.com, for the sake of this blog, we will call him the Tour Insider.

Bolton posts the Power Rankings for pgatour.com. His Power Rankings usually consist of ten players. So I will take the top 5 players from his list and compare him to my 5 picks for each tournament this year. For readers that are familiar with how I compared results in the past, I look at total winnings by the 5 players picked, the average rank for all 5 players, and the number of players that make the cut in our picks. For each tournament, there will be a win, lose, or draw between the two of us. Hopefully this will add to the value of reading the picks.

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

#	Player	CLi
1	Steve Stricker	2.95
2	Robert Allenby	4.80
3	Rory Sabbatini	5.65
4	Phil Mickelson	6.75
5	Tim Clark	11.60
6	Charles Howell III	15.35
7	K.J. Choi	20.00
8	Bubba Watson	21.45
9	John Rollins	21.55
10	Adam Scott	21.75
11	Jim Furyk	21.80
12	Matt Kuchar	21.80
13	Ernie Els	22.45
14	Angel Cabrera	22.65
15	Carl Pettersson	24.80

Nice. There are 4 players that have CLi figures below 10. That is a good sign that 1) the CLi calculation has enough data to compute a better forecasts, and 2) the are several clear players that have an advantage over the rest of the field. So, from that logic, I will stick with the first 4 players in the CLi rankings: Stricker, Allenby, Sabbatini, and Mickelson.

For my 5th pick, I would normally stick with Tim Clark. Very seldom do I skip over Clark as he is a fighter on the course and plays to the end of the tournament. However, I see a player in the 6th spot of the CLi rankings that has played well at Riveria and is playing well this year leading up to this tournament. That is Charles Howell, III. I am going to pick Howell for my 5th player.

Below are my 5 picks for the Northern Trust Open:

#	Player	CLi
1	Steve Stricker	2.95
2	Robert Allenby	4.80
3	Rory Sabbatini	5.65
4	Phil Mickelson	6.75
5	Charles Howell III	15.35

Below is the top 5 players in the Power Rankings from Rob Bolton:

1. Steve Stricker
2. Phil Mickelson
3. Robert Allenby
4. Matt Kuchar
5. Rory Sabbatini

Here is a link to Bolton's Power Rankings so that you can read more about his thoughts on his top players in this week's Power Rankings:

Bolton's Power Rankings: Northern Trust Open

We have 4 players in common this week: Stricker, Mickelson, Allenby, and Sabbatini. So the difference in our picks is Kuchar (Tour Insider) and Howell (Tour Outsider). Play well Howell.

Below are the settings for the CLi calculation I used for the Northern Trust 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)
30	5%	5%
Number of Tournaments Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA3)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA3)
4	20%	20%