Predictions: Honda Classic

Congratulations to Hunter Mahan, last week’s winner at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. For all the talk about Mahan as one of the “hot players under 30", it’s surprising that this is his first win in almost three years; it will be interesting to see how long it takes him to record his next win.

The Tour now heads east for the first stop in the “Florida swing”, the Honda Classic. Last year’s winner, Y.E. Yang, certainly would have been an “out-of-the-box” pick at the time, as he was just a few months removed from Q-school. He was even more of an “out-of-the-box” pick a few months later, when he won the PGA Championship. I followed Yang for a round at Doral the week after his victory at Honda last year, and saw no signs of the major to come. So for this year’s edition of the Honda, I’ve got quite a few “out-of-the-box” names, as well as some more familiar.

My “front 4" for this week’s Yahoo Fantasy Golf game:
Charlie Wi, Robert Allenby, Fredrik Jacobson, John Rollins

My “bench team” for at least the first day:
D.A. Points, Jeff Klauk, Scott Piercy, Tim Clark

With the exception of Clark, all the rest of the selected players finished in the top 10 at Honda last year. We’ll see if this week will be one in which past performance actually correlates to future results!

Last week’s predictions were pretty lackluster. My two “spotlight players”, J.B. Holmes and J.P. Hayes, finished in 43rd and 36th places, respectively. An indifferent performance from my entire Yahoo Fantasy Golf team led to a total of 1255 points, in the 79th percentile. Hopefully, some Florida sunshine will shine on this week’s line-up!

Speaking of Florida sunshine, a sneak preview of next week: I’ll be blogging from Doral, Florida, and will have “live” updates after each round. I’ll kick off the week with a few “off-course” anecdotes from last year’s Doral trip, so stay tuned!

Best of luck to all!