The PLAYERS Championship

This week is the US PGA Tour's gem: the PLAYERS Championship. It is played on a course it owns, Sawgrass, which is a great course in Florida. It is a classical Pete Dye-designed course, and is the home of the island green -- the famous 17th hole. With a great course and great field, this week should be another fu-filled tournament.

Below is the list of the top 15 players in the CLi rankings for the PLAYERS Championship.

#	Player	CLi
1	Lee Westwood	9.30
2	Luke Donald	11.40
3	Francesco Molinari	11.85
4	Jason Dufner	14.05
5	Phil Mickelson	15.35
6	Ian Poulter	19.00
7	Jason Day	20.05
8	Peter Hanson	22.30
9	Ernie Els	25.45
10	Brian Davis	27.50
11	Tiger Woods	27.80
12	Matt Kuchar	29.10
13	Hunter Mahan	30.10
14	Zach Johnson	30.80
15	Jim Furyk	30.90

The CLi rankings are a little high this week, with only one player having a CLi figure less than 10.  That is Westwood, who has a CLi of 9.30.  He just barely squeaked in under the 10-figure rule-of-thumb selection metric.  In any event, I am going to stick with the CLi rankings this week.  The top 5 players in the rankings all look good: Westwood, Donald, Molinari, Dufner, and Mickelson.

Westwood (analysis) finished 4th last year in this event and comes in play well of late.  He finished 5th last week at the Wells Fargo Championship, won the Indonesian Masters several weeks ago, and finished 3rd in the Masters a month ago.

Donald (analysis) also finished 4th last year in this event.  He has not played as well as Westwood of late. But he did finish 3rd two weeks ago in Zurich, won the Transitions Championship in mid-March, and has yet to miss a cut this year.

Molinari (analysis).  If you don't look at tournaments outside of the US PGA Tour, you would not necessarily see Molinari in the list of players this week that could play well. However, he won last week in Spain in a European PGA tour sanctioned event, and finished 6th in the Volvo China Open in mid-April.  He finished 19th in the Masters, and was close to grabbing a top-10 before dropping back several places with a final round of 74.  He has yet to miss a cut this year.  However, he did miss the cut last year in this event after finishing 9th in 2010.  I am going to stick with him because he is playing well coming into the tournament and he has a top-10 in this event.

Dufner (analysis) steps up to the plate in big tournaments like this.  Look to see him to continue to play well after his win two weeks ago in New Orleans.  The difference from two weeks ago is that he is now a married man.  His wedding was this past Saturday (my birthday) to Amanda Boyd, and thus he missed the Wells Fargo Championship last week.  Normally an event like that might take away the focus of playing this week. However, Dufner is the most "chilled", focused, and even keeled person there ever was on the professional golf circuit -- partially confirmed by comparing his wedding pictures with his pictures after winning the Zurich Classic.  While he won the last time out, he has yet to miss a cut this year on the mainland (he missed the cut at the Sony Open in Hawaii in January -- his first event of the year), and he also finished 6th in this event last year.

Mickelson (analysis) -- one can't forget Lefty.  He has been included on this year's Hall of Fame ballot, and got the call this week that he would be accepted into the ring of honor.  Not that getting to be a member of the Hall of Fame was a high priority for Mickelson -- it will just add to his accolades -- it might keep his confidence high this week.  He missed the cut in this event in 2000.  Since then he has been north of the cut line (i.e. has yet to miss a cut since missing the cut in 2000), and won the event in 2007.  His average ranking in this event from 2001 to 2011 is 25th.  He placed 26th last week in the Wells Fargo Championship, but in the previous two tournaments before last week, he finished 3rd (the Masters) and 4th (Shell Houston Open).

Below are my 5 picks for the PLAYERS Championship:

#	Player	CLi
1	Lee Westwood	9.30
2	Luke Donald	11.40
3	Francesco Molinari	11.85
4	Jason Dufner	14.05
5	Phil Mickelson	15.35

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

1. Lee Westwood
2. Rory McIlroy
3. Luke Donald
4. Hunter Mahan
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: PLAYERS Championship

We have 2 players in common this tournament: Westwood and Donald

Below are the settings for the CLi calculation I used for the PLAYERS Championship:

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.