Quail Hollow
Phil Mickelson: Mickelson is hilariously overrated right now because of one tournament. If you want justification that Tiger over Phil at the Masters was a good call, Tiger lost by 5 shots to Phil, looked terrible on the weekend and is still favored by MORE this week.
If there was such thing as golf sabermetrics it would be interesting to see a breakdown of Phil’s penalty shots this year. It seems like he took a ton of penalty shots coming into the Masters, then had none(I don’t think) at the Masters. Quail Hollow has much more trouble than Augusta so it should be interesting to see what Phil does this week.
Tiger: My rationalization on Tiger is that he has been soundly bashed in Master’s post game and is now more likely to win this week than at Augusta. Part of it has to do with the field involved, which is not as strong, but he’s nowhere near as underrated relatively this week.
Kenny Perry: Perry should be an interesting person to follow over the next couple of years, as he arguably had his best years ever at ages 47-49. I’m not sure how fast your skills should be expected to decline, but based on the last two years he is certainly still among the strongest players in the field.
Anthony Kim: Generally, I’m pretty optimistic at Kim’s future, but not when he is a past champion, playing incredibly well in the last month and on the back end of a flight back from Korea.
Rankings:
Not much important movement in my rankings as most of the big names took off last week, as well as the tournaments that were eliminated from the rolling two year rankings.
Seung-yul Noh: Noh had another good finish in Asia, and moved up to right around the average for a PGA Tour player. This is important for two reasons; One, he’s only 17. Two, he has gotten nowhere near the level of attention that Ryo Ishikawa has, but there level of play has been very similar based on a small collection of tournaments from the two. It’s also worth noting that Matteo Manassero has played about half as many rounds as them, but he seems to be on a similar level and is turning pro soon.
Sergio Garcia: Sergio Garcia dropped a small amount after another tough showing in New Orleans(about .02 of a shot per round). More noteworthy, his overally poor play so far this season really hasn’t dropped him too much(basically from 5th to 6th). It’s getting hard to defend Sergio because he looks like a mess right now, but you have to remember over the last two years he has still been a very good golfer.
| 1 | Tiger Woods | -1.16 |
| 2 | Jim Furyk | -0.63 |
| 3 | Steve Stricker | -0.62 |
| 4 | Phil Mickelson | -0.59 |
| 5 | Lee Westwood | -0.55 |
| 6 | Sergio Garcia | -0.51 |
| 7 | Camilo Villegas | -0.49 |
| 8 | Anthony Kim | -0.49 |
| 9 | Paul Casey | -0.49 |
| 10 | Robert Allenby | -0.49 |
| 11 | Padraig Harrington | -0.48 |
| 12 | Hunter Mahan | -0.48 |
| 13 | Ernie Els | -0.47 |
| 14 | Zach Johnson | -0.44 |
| 15 | Ian Poulter | -0.44 |
| 16 | Retief Goosen | -0.44 |
| 17 | Luke Donald | -0.42 |
| 18 | Martin Kaymer | -0.42 |
| 19 | Kenny Perry | -0.41 |
| 20 | David Toms | -0.41 |
| 21 | Geoff Ogilvy | -0.40 |
| 22 | Tim Clark | -0.40 |
| 23 | Robert Karlsson | -0.40 |
| 24 | Matt Kuchar | -0.39 |
| 25 | Nick Watney | -0.39 |
Might be back with some live odds Sunday, if I’m around and Tiger/Phil or anyone else(Hurricane Steve) interesting is in contention.
REXFORD BUZZSAW 