Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Northern Trust Open

The US PGA Tour will stay in California this week to play the Northern Trust Open.

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

# Player CLi
1 Phil Mickelson  7.55
2 Dustin Johnson  17.10
3 Matt Kuchar  18.65
4 Steve Stricker  18.75
5 Steve Marino  20.60
6 Luke Donald  21.05
7 Marc Leishman  23.00
8 Brendon De Jonge  23.50
9 Paul Casey  23.55
10 Mark Wilson  24.70
11 J.B. Holmes  26.60
12 Bubba Watson  26.65
13 Charles Howell III  27.05
14 Ricky Barnes  28.05
15 Fred Couples  30.90

I am going to pick Mickelson for my first pick. Lefty has a clear advantage per his CLi figure (7.55) being almost 10 points lower than the next player in the rankings.

Then I am going to pick Johnson. Even though he is trending the wrong way the past couple of tournaments, he was playing well before that, and has played well at this tournament the past two years (placing 3rd and 10th). His length will help him this week.

Kuchar seems like another good pick this week in terms of making the cut. He has not missed the cut in this tournament, and he has been playing well leading up to this tournament. In his last 3 tournaments he has placed 7th (Bob Hope), 5th (Sony Open), and 6th (Hyundai).

For my final two picks, I am going to go with Stricker and Donald. I skipped over Marino as I felt Donald had a better record in this tournament, and that his CLi would have been higher if he had played in tournaments this year (this is first tournament this year) -- which actually goes against the logic of the CLi based upon my configuration settings for this tournament (recent confidence is half of the equation).

Below are my 5 picks for the Northern Trust Open :

# Player CLi
1 Phil Mickelson  7.55
2 Dustin Johnson  17.10
3 Matt Kuchar  18.65
4 Steve Stricker  18.75
5 Luke Donald  21.05

Below are the top 5 players in the Power Rankings from Rob Bolton:
  1. Phil Mickelson
  2. Steve Stricker
  3. Luke Donald
  4. Matt Kuchar
  5. J.B. Holmes
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: Mickelson, Stricker, Donald, Kuchar. -- hmmmmm, the one player difference is Holmes and Johnson....come on Johnson!

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%


If you don't like the configuration of my CLi calculation, feel free to run your own CLi calculation with your own desired settings by going to golfcli.com.

2 comments:

  1. Hey John,

    I like your top 5 picks. But, I like Holmes number 6. Good luck.

    Baummer

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  2. Baummer, it looks like Bolton agrees with you in terms of Holmes. And now that I am living in Kentucky, I should be picking Holmes being that Holmes is from Kentucky....hmmm. Let's see if the CLi rules over state loyalty in this case. :-) - JM

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