Hyundai Tournament of Champions

This is the first tournament of the 2011 season for the US PGA Tour. As usual, the tour starts in Hawaii with a tournament that has a limited number of players and no cut. It is the newly named Hyndai Tournament of Champions (formerly know as the SBS Championship and prior to that as the Mercedes-Benz Championship).

Below is the list of the top 15 players in the CLi rankings for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions.

#	Player	CLi
1	Jonathan Byrd	7.70
2	Geoff Ogilvy	8.65
3	Adam Scott	10.15
4	Ernie Els	10.70
5	Hunter Mahan	11.35
6	Zach Johnson	12.40
7	Ben Crane	12.60
8	Jim Furyk	12.65
9	Steve Stricker	12.95
10	Matt Kuchar	13.80
11	Anthony Kim	14.00
12	Dustin Johnson	14.20
13	Cameron Beckman	14.40
14	Charley Hoffman	15.85
15	Camilo Villegas	16.40

Usually it is difficult to pick players during the first couple of tournaments in the season because of the previous 2 month layoff. However, with this tournament being a limited field and has no cut, it makes it a little easier to pick players although it is the first tournament of the season,

For my picks, I like the top 5 in the CLi rankings: Byrd, Ogilvy, Scott, Els, and Mahan.

I was thinking about skipping on Mahan and going with Furyk. The reason I was thinking about Furyk iis because there is not much difference in their CLi rankings although Mahan is ranked 5th and Furyk 8th (difference of 4 spots in the CLi rankings). In addition, Furyk tends to play well in Hawaii. He has a house in the state of Hawaii, which basically makes him a local boy; local boys tend to play well in their tournaments. But I am going to trust the CLi this week and pick Mahan over Furyk.

Below are my 5 picks for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions :

#	Player	CLi
1	Jonathan Byrd	7.70
2	Geoff Ogilvy	8.65
3	Adam Scott	10.15
4	Ernie Els	10.70
5	Hunter Mahan	11.35

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

1. Geoff Ogilvy
2. Ernie Els
3. Graeme McDowell
4. Steve Stricker
5. Tim Clark

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: Hyundai Tournament of Champions

We have 2 players in common this week: Ogilvy and Els.

Below are the settings for the CLi calculation I used for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions :

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)
90	15%	15%
Number of Tournaments Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA3)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA3)
4	10%	10%