Arnold Palmer Invitational

The US PGA Tour is on the west coast of Florida this week to play the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Innisbruck.

Below is the list of the top 15 players in the CLi rankings for the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

#	Player	CLi
1	Chris Couch	13.80
2	Robert Allenby	17.35
3	Hunter Mahan	17.35
4	Webb Simpson	21.50
5	Vijay Singh	23.80
6	Sergio Garcia	25.25
7	Justin Rose	25.75
8	Kevin Na	26.05
9	Tiger Woods	27.80
10	Brandt Snedeker	30.15
11	J.J. Henry	32.70
12	J.B. Holmes	33.55
13	Ernie Els	34.45
14	Zach Johnson	34.45
15	John Senden	34.55

No player has a CLi less than 10. That usually means that there is not a clear favorite to play well this week. There are however, 3 players with CLis in the tens.

My first 3 picks will be with the CLi rankings: Couch, Allenby, and Mahan.

Couch placed 4th in this tournament last year, and placed 5th last weekk in the Transitions. He has not missed a cut in the 5 tournaments he has played in this year, with 3 top 10s and 36th being his worse finish. [ see analysis ]

Allenby has played in this tournament 8 times since 2001. The last 5 times he played in the tournament (he missed 2008) he has finished no worse than 32nd, with his best finish being 4th in 2006. He has finished in the top 25 in the last 3 medal play tournaments he has played in, with his best finish being 4th at the Northern Trust Open. [ see analysis ]

Mahan has finished 25h over better in the lat 3 years of this tournament. And this year, in the 7 tournament he has played in he has made every cut and placed in the top 10 four of those tournaments. [ see analysis ]

For my 4th pick, I will stick with the CLi rankings and pick the 4th player: Simpson. Simpson played well last week in the Transitions where had a wonderful chance to win the tournament before faltering down the stretch in the last round. He missed the cut in this tournament last year. So that doesn't bode well. However, he did place 11th in 2009 and 31st in 2008 when he was an amateur. Let's hope he thinks about those finishs when he plays this week. [ see analysis ]

I will skip over Singh and Garcia as they are an unkown quantity for me...and inconsistent this year. I have picked Singh several times, and when I pick him, he doesn't do well. So I have decided to hold off on picking him unless his CLi figure is clearly different than other players.

My final and 5th pick is Rose. He played well last week at the Transitions, leading the tournament after 3 rounds. He faltered in the final round, which was most likely because of nerves. I think he is still hitting the ball well, and scoring well.  He did miss the cut in this tournament last year, however, in all of his prior starts here (5 of them) he made the cut.  So I see him having a solid finish this week at Arnie's place. see analysis ]

Below are my 5 picks for the Arnold Palmer Invitational :

#	Player	CLi
1	Chris Couch	13.80
2	Robert Allenby	17.35
3	Hunter Mahan	17.35
4	Webb Simpson	21.50
5	Justin Rose	25.75

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

1. Dustin Johnson
2. Justin Rose
3. Hunter Mahan
4. Martin Laird
5. Kevin Na

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: Arnold Palmer Invitational

We have 2 players in common this week: Rose and Mahan.

Below are the settings for the CLi calculation I used for the Arnold Palmer Invitational:

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.