Pick of the Week: THE PLAYERS Championship

Here we are ladies and gentlemen- THE PLAYERS Championship, aka the 5th major!! The tournament with the biggest purse, the deepest field, and the course that nobody owns. Famed TPC Sawgrass in Florida favors no particular golfer, as nobody here has collected more than 2 wins on this course (and the list of two-time winners is small as well). The one thing that can be said about Sawgrass is this: you better be in excellent form the whole week with your golf game, and you better be mentally tough, or you will get eaten alive. Not having those components usually spells disaster. Generally, another rule of thumb around Sawgrass is you must be accurate and be able to putt on Sunday. Watch out for these things as the tournament rolls on. Also, watch out for a few notable story lines this week, such as how Tiger does and how his injury impacts him (or not), if Luke Donald can back up a great season with a great win, if Martin Kaymer can show people he is World No. 2 worthy, and if Sergio Garcia can continue to find his form to continue his streak of majors played at next month's U.S. Open. Now, off to my choice for this week. I'm going to go with Aussie Adam Scott. The 2004 Champion obviously knows what it takes to win here, capturing that aforementioned win with a clutch putt on the 18th hole en route to his victory. He's been in good form this year too, posting a runner-up finish at the Masters with a sprinkle of other top-10's as well as he continues to roll with the long putter. Adam has arguably the best swing in golf, so once he figured out how to putt well again, his form has returned. I expect good things out of the still young 30 year-old, and a good finish to this tournament to boot.

P.O.W. Re-Cap: Last week things got a bit confusing in our Pick of the Week standings. Bernardo's pick Rory McIlroy missed the halfways cut, while my pick Anthony Kim just made it in. Yet, with the new two-cut policy the TOUR can apply to tournaments nowadays, Kim was cut after the third round. After talking to Bernardo I decided that this should be a tie, since neither of our playing techiniallly finished the required 72 holes last week to post a number. So it sits at Bernardo-6, JJ-3.

Already used- Phil Mickelson, Geoff Ogilvy, Rickie Fowler, Aaron Baddeley, Hunter Mahan, Ricky Barnes, Luke Donald, Justin Rose, Anthony Kim.

Adam before the tournament action this week:

photo source: telegraph.co.uk