British Open

This week the US PGA Tour is going across the pond to the British Open at Royal St. George's golf course.

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

#	Player	CLi
1	Rory McIlroy	6.4
2	Nick Watney	7.3
3	Lee Westwood	8.1
4	Steve Stricker	9.4
5	Sergio Garcia	10.8
6	Luke Donald	11.1
7	Retief Goosen	13.2
8	Robert Rock	22.9
9	Fredrik Jacobson	24.1
10	Zach Johnson	31.9
11	Ian Poulter	31.9
12	K.J. Choi	32.1
13	Adam Scott	32.1
14	Bo Van Pelt	32.4
15	Rickie Fowler	32.6

The first 7 players are within 6 CLi points. Then there is a 9 point difference between the 7th and 8th players. In addition, the first 7 players have low CLi figures, with most of them being below 10.  So I am really looking at the top 7 players to pick my 5 players this week. All 7 players look good however.

In picking my five players I am going start with the assumption that the top 5 players are in, and then try to justify why I should move one or two of them out for players that are in the 6th and 7th positions in the CLi rankings.

Donald (analysis) and Goosen (analysis) are the 6th and 7th players in the list.  Donald is the current number one player in the world rankings, and it would be difficult to explain leaving him out of my picks for that fact alone -- not to mention that he won last week at the Scottish Open. And Goosen is a strong player on tough and "weird" courses like Royal St. George's. He plays patiently and lets the other players backup while he stays steady.

However, Donald has a better chance than Goosen to play well in my opinion. So then I have to compare another player in the top 5 with Donald to pull out in place of Donald. I like the Europeans, so I am going to keep with McIlroy (analysis), Westwood (analysis), and Garcia (analysis). Watney (analysis) has been playing so consistent all season long that it is hard to go against him. That leaves Stricker (analysis) to compare against Donald.

Both Stricker and Donald won last week; Stricker at the John Deere Classic and Donald at the Scottish Open. They both shot low numbers to win their respective tournaments.  Both are patient and consistent players with strong short games -- which bode well for British Open style of golf courses.  But I am going to stick with Stricker for the mere fact that Donald has a lot of pressure on him to win this week being that he is British (although he lives in the USA now) and is the number one player in the world. Stricker has less pressure and can possibly have a stronger focus on playing well (and with less distractions) at Royal St. George's this week than Donald.

However, it might not be smart of me to pick either Stricker or Donald. In the last 10 years, the only player that has won their previous tournament leading up to the British Open has been Padraig Harrington...and that was in 2007 and 2008 when he won the Irish PGA Championship, which is not sanctioned by any of the major tours. So players that win their previous tournaments leading up to the British Open are not necessarily a strong pick -- at least for a tournament sanctioned by one of the leading tours.

Below are my 5 picks for the British Open :

#	Player	CLi
1	Rory McIlroy	6.4
2	Nick Watney	7.3
3	Lee Westwood	8.1
4	Steve Stricker	9.4
5	Sergio Garcia	10.8

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

1. Luke Donald
2. Lee Westwood
3. Sergio Garcia
4. Charl Schwartzel
5. Jason Day

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: British Open

We have 2 players in common this week: Westwood and Garcia.

Below are the settings for the CLi calculation I used for the British Open:

Number of Past Tournaments Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA1)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA1)
5	20%	20%
Number of Days Looking Back
Number	Scoring Avg Weight (SA2)	Earnings Avg Weight (EA2)
30	10%	10%
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.