Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Mayakoba Classic

As mentioned in my previous post this morning, the US PGA Tour has two events this week. One is the Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona, and the other is the Mayakoba Classic in Mexico. This post is for the Mayakoba Classic.

Below is the list of the top 15 players in the CLi rankings for the Mayakoba Classic.

# Player CLi 
1 Johnson Wagner 2.75
2 Brian Gay 5.75
3 John Cook 6.80
4 Spencer Levin 10.45
5 Rory Sabbatini 18.05
6 Peter Lonard 21.65
7 Tom Lehman 23.05
8 Jarrod Lyle 25.40
9 William McGirt 25.90
10 Nick Price 29.25
11 J.P. Hayes 33.20
12 Billy Horschel 34.25
13 Harrison Frazar 36.20
14 Charles Howell III 36.55
15 Chris Stroud 37.25

Wagner (analysis) looks like a clear favorite.  He is tops in the CLi rankings with a CLi of 2.75.  That is low, and rightly so.  He won the tournament last year, has a first and second place finish so far this year, and has yet to miss a cut in the tournaments he has played this year.

Gay (analysis) plays well in this tournament, having won it in 2008.  In the four times he has played in the event, he has not missed a cut.  He is coming off a 20th finish at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am two weeks ago, and has a 6th place finish in January at the Sony Open in Hawaii.

I am going to skip over Cook (analysis) even though he is placed well in the CLi rankings and has had several good finishes at this tournament --- he finished 3rd in the tournament last year.  The main reason he is placed well in the CLi rankings is because of his Champions Tour finishes.  The CLi uses all tournaments played by a player, and doesn't let the user pick which tournaments to not include....one of the flaws of the CLi calculation.

Levin (analysis) continues to place well in the CLi rankings.  This is logical, as he is playing well, and he placed 2nd in this event last year after losing in a playoff to Wagner.

Sabbatini (analysis) placed 5th in this event last year.  As for his play of late, he has been sporadic.  He started the season off well with a 14th and 29th finish. However, he has missed the cut the past two weeks at the Northern Trust Open and AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am. If you look closely, it has been one round in each event that has hurt him....an 80 in the 2nd round of the Northern Trust Open and a 77 in the 2nd round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am.  If he can play a little more consistently in the 2nd round (i.e. don't let the bad shots hurt him), he should finish well in this event.

For my final pick, I am going to skip down to Lyle (analysis).  I watched him play last week at the Northern Trust Open and he is hitting it well.   In addition, he has played this event 4 times and notched 3 top ten finishes along with a 36th finish.  In other words, he has yet to miss the cut in this event.

Below are my 5 picks for the Mayakoba Classic:

# Player CLi 
1 Johnson Wagner 2.75
2 Brian Gay 5.75
3 Spencer Levin 10.45
4 Rory Sabbatini 18.05
5 Jarrod Lyle 25.40

Below are the top 5 players in the Power Rankings from Rob Bolton:
  1. Brian Gay
  2. Spencer Levin
  3. Jarrod Lyle
  4. Johnson Wagner
  5. Briny Baird
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: Mayakoba Classic

We have 4 players in common this week: Gay, Levin, Lyle, and Wagner.  Come'on Sabbatini!!!

Below are the settings for the CLi calculation I used for the Mayakoba Classic:

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.

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