Northern Trust Open

This week, the US PGA Tour is at Riveria Country Club in beautiful Pacific Palisades, California, to play the Northern Trust Open.

Here are a couple of off-the-wall stats about this week's field in general:

• 12 of the top 15 players in the tournament's money leaders are playing this week. Stricker and Weir are the notable players that are missing in the field when examining this list of players. [ see entire list ]
• A total of 409 different players have played in the tournament since 2000. Of those 409 players, 135 of them have played the tournament only once, with 18 of those players in the field this year. Of those 409 players, 124 of them have never made the cut, with 13 of those players in the field this year.
• The lowest score for the tournament since 2000 is 17-under, by Mike Weir in 2004. [ past leaderboards ]
• Last year, the tournament had 144 players that played 437 rounds (31,396 strokes; 71.84 average per round) which distributed $6,587,360 in winnings.  The averages: $45,746 per player; $15,074 per round; $210 per stroke. [ stats from last year ]
• Two players have birthdays this week: Cameron Beckman and Greg Owen.

Now to the real stuff of interest.  Below is the list of the top 15 players in the CLi rankings for the Northern Trust Open.

#	Player	CLi
1	Phil Mickelson	2.20
2	Kevin Na	10.85
3	Spencer Levin	12.10
4	Brendon De Jonge	17.25
5	Luke Donald	19.65
6	John Rollins	20.00
7	Aaron Baddeley	20.90
8	Charles Howell III	22.00
9	Rory Sabbatini	24.55
10	Jimmy Walker	24.55
11	Cameron Tringale	26.20
12	Charlie Wi	26.70
13	Dustin Johnson	27.40
14	Sergio Garcia	27.80
15	Ricky Barnes	27.85

I am going to go with Mickelson (analysis), Na (analysis), Levin (analysis), Donald (analysis), and Rollins (analysis).

Mickelson is the all time money leader for the event, won last week, and loves playing on the west coast in general.  The CLi figure clearly shows that with his 2.20 CLi...and the next player's CLi being over 8 points higher at 10.85.

Na finished 3rd here last year, and 10th in 2010.  He has played the event 8 times, and after missing the cut the first 3 times he played the tournament, he has finished 55th or better in this event the last five times.  He is playing well leading up to the tournament with two 5th place finishes in the last two tournaments.

Levin played here for the first time last year and placed 12th -- a good showing for the first time playing Riveria on the big stage.  And he is playing well leading up to this tournament.  The question will be if he will get mentally tired towards the later rounds of the tournament because he has been playing a lot so far this year (every week, except the first week of the tournament of champions) and his experiences two weeks ago in Arizona at the Waste Management Phoenix Open.  Hopefully he will pull through with 4 good rounds.

Donald missed the cut last year in this event, which kick started his stellar play last year.  Prior to last year, Donald had finished 2nd, 6th, and 3rd in the previous instances of this tournament.  So he tends to play well in this event.  He has only played one event this year, which was in Abu Dhabi where he placed 48th.

As for my fifth pick, I selected Rollins.  I selected Rollins over De Jonge because Rollins is playing well leading up to this tournament.  De Jonge missed the cut in his last event two weeks ago (the Waste Management Phoenix Open).  Rollins has had a sporadic array of finishes the 9 times he has played in this tournament.  He has 4 missed cuts over the course of the 9 events, which is not good, especially since comparing to De Jonge's two instances of the tournament where he has placed 25th and 10th.  However, Rollins has 5 top 25 finishes in the other 5 instances he has played in the event.

Below are my 5 picks for the Northern Trust Open:

#	Player	CLi
1	Phil Mickelson	2.20
2	Kevin Na	10.85
3	Spencer Levin	12.10
4	Luke Donald	19.65
5	John Rollins	20.00

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

1. Luke Donald
2. Aaron Baddeley
3. Phil Mickelson
4. Dustin Johnson
5. Adam Scott

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 2 players in common this week: Donald and Mickelson.

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.