Sony Open in Hawaii

The second tournament of the 2013 US PGA Tour season stays in Hawaii to play the Sony Open.   The event is the first full field event of the season, since last week's Hyundai Tournament of Champions (actually the tournament ended early this week due to poor weather conditions) was a limited field of 30 players.

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

#	Player	CLi
1	Dustin Johnson	9.70
2	Charles Howell III	9.75
3	Brian Gay	11.05
4	Matthew Every	12.40
5	Keegan Bradley	14.15
6	Brendon De Jonge	20.10
7	Jerry Kelly	20.35
8	Jimmy Walker	20.95
9	Zach Johnson	21.60
10	Scott Piercy	21.85
11	Carl Pettersson	22.65
12	Chad Campbell	22.70
13	Davis Love III	22.75
14	Ryan Palmer	24.10
15	Mark Wilson	24.75

Note the high CLi figures compared to last week's Hyundai Tournament of Champions.  The lowest CLi close to 10 (Johnson, 9.70).  That is one indication that the CLi is not as good an indicator in this tournament as it was for the Hyundai last week.  Both tournaments don't have much data to go on due to the two month lay off between last year's season and the start of this year's season.  However, this tournament has 156 players to compare against one another rather than just 30 players.  The increase in players increases the number of unknown factors which makes it difficult to predict which players have the best chance of playing well.

Even though the CLi figures are high, and the unknowns have increased this tournament, I am going to still stick with the top 5 players in the CLi rankings: Johnson (analysis), Howell III (analysis), Gay (analysis), Every (analysis), and Bradley (analysis).  3 of the players have solid records in this tournament (Johnson, Howell III, and Gay), and the other two played well last week in the Hyundai (Every and Bradley).  Johnson and Bradley have also played well in this tournament.

Below are my 5 picks for the Sony Open:

#	Player	CLi
1	Dustin Johnson	9.70
2	Charles Howell III	9.75
3	Brian Gay	11.05
4	Matthew Every	12.40
5	Keegan Bradley	14.15

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

1. Tim Clark
2. Carl Pettersson
3. Charles Howell III
4. Dustin Johnson
5. Brendon de Jonge

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: Sony Open

We have 3 players in common this week: Howell III and Johnson

Below are the settings for the CLi calculation I used for the Sony 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.