The Golf CLi

With GolfInvestors' primary activity being a stock market a lot of people do not realize that GolfInvestors has data on tournament results and indexed articles for the past 5 years that can help them better select golfers that will do well in a given golf tournament. As a result of this data we have created the Golf Confidence Level Indicator (CLi).

The purpose of the CLi is to provide users with a rank of golfers in a tournament's field based upon computed CLi figure. The golfer with the lowest CLi in the field is supposedly to have the best chance of playing well in the tournament.

The formula used to compute the CLi uses results of the player in that tournament for the past xx years and the results of the golfer for the prior xx weeks leading up to the tournament. The data mainly includes scoring averages and money earned.

Let's make it clear, the CLi is not an exact science at this time as we continue to refine the formula used to compute the CLi. So at this time it should just to be one of the tools users should use to whittle down their selection of golfers they want to put on their "team" for the selected tournament. So rather than having to pick from 156 players each week, users can select from the top 10-15 candidates.

To explain one of the ways to use the CLi ranking let's look at some real data. This week the US PGA Tour is in Canada playing the Bell Canadian Open, with the European PGA Tour in Germany playing the Linde German Masters. The top 15 players based upon CLi rankings for each tournament is as follows:

US PGA Tour: 2005 Bell Canadian Open

	Player	CLi
1	Vijay Singh	2.30
2	Justin Rose	5.00
3	Craig Stadler	8.65
4	Loren Roberts	10.55
5	Scott Verplank	11.85
6	Pat Perez	12.85
7	Joey Sindelar	14.00
8	Robert Allenby	14.30
9	Stuart Appleby	21.60
10	Brandt Jobe	21.65
11	Jonathan Kaye	22.15
12	John Rollins	22.80
13	Bob Estes	23.05
14	Jesper Parnevik	24.25
15	Chris DiMarco	30.25

European PGA Tour: 2005 Linde German Masters

	Player	CLi
1	David Howell	4.05
2	Retief Goosen	7.65
3	Niclas Fasth	9.35
4	Paul Casey	10.25
5	Miguel Angel Jimenez	13.55
6	Michael Campbell	15.20
7	Padraig Harrington	15.50
8	Bradley Dredge	15.75
9	Raphael Jacquelin	17.80
10	Henrik Stenson	18.60
11	Ian Poulter	18.90
12	Brett Rumford	19.25
13	Mikael Lundberg	20.20
14	Ricardo Gonzalez	22.05
15	Emanuele Canonica	23.75

What do these two lists mean? They are saying that the best chance of playing well in these two tournaments lay in the hands of Vijay Singh for the Bell Canadian Open and David Howell for the Linde German Masters. It does not mean these players have the best chance of winning, just playing well.

For example, let's look Pat Perez in the Bell Canadian Open. His CLi is 12.85 and he is ranked 6th in the CLi ranking for the tournament. This is basically saying that 65% of the time he will place better than 12.85th place, which is the 6th best average amongst the players in the tournament's field.

[ Note: Why 65% of the time?...because we have not refined the CLi enough to justify it being higher at this time. Over time we should be able to feel more confident in the CLi formula as we refine it. ]

You can view the Golf Cli rankings for the current week's tournaments each Monday on the GolfInvestors site by going to the Field Analysis page for the selected tournament. For example, here is the link for the Field Analysis page for the Bell Canadian Open this week:

2005 Bell Canadian Open Field Analysis

The GolfInvestors site posts the Golf CLi for tournaments played each week for most the major tours.

If you do not want to mess with the complexity of the GolfInvestors site, and you just want to look at the US PGA Tour and European PGA Tour sanctioned tournaments, you can view the dedicated Golf CLi web site at golfcli.com. The CLi rankings for the current week's tournaments are posted on the golfcli.com web site each Tuesday.