Predictions: U.S. Open

After a brutally hot and humid week in Memphis, the PGA Tour now moves to much-cooler Pebble Beach for the U.S. Open. The scenery will be breathtaking, and we can hope that the golf will be, too.

I’ve got a line-up heavy on the “chalk picks” this week, with one total “flier” thrown in for good measure.

A-level picks:
Starter: Luke Donald. An all-around good player, in very good form after his recent win in Europe. He’ll be a popular pick this week.

Bench (at least for Thursday): Phil Mickelson. I like Phil at Pebble Beach. I don’t particularly like Phil at a U.S. Open. If his short game is magic, he’ll be “starting” later in the week. Otherwise, it won’t be boring, but it won’t be pretty, either.

No-way pick: Tiger Woods. I don’t know which Tiger will show up. Until there’s more consistency in his game, he’s off my line-ups.

B-level picks:
Starters: Lee Westwood, Dustin Johnson. Westwood and every other player who was in the sweat-fest Sunday at TPC Southwind gets a slight downgrade for recovery factor, but I still think Lee will put up a solid finish—top-10, but probably not a win. As for Dustin, he’s won the regular Tour stop at Pebble Beach the last two years. Yes, the course will be playing differently than it did in February, but it’s still the same course.

Bench: Nick Watney, Jim Furyk. Watney was my pre-season pick for this tournament; I’ve cooled on him a bit after a lackluster start to his 2010 season, but not enough to take him completely off the board. Furyk’s hard to pick against in any major, though I was one of many who was stung by his MC at Augusta.

No-way picks: Robert Allenby, Rory McIlroy. I wouldn’t have picked Allenby this week under most circumstances—a balky putter is the last thing one needs at a U.S. Open—but his MC, WD the last two weeks is only adding to my concerns about the current state of his game. McIlroy has his own putting woes at times, and gets further downgraded by the “Memphis factor”.

C-level picks:
Starter: Ben Crane. Another player in very good form lately. I look for that to continue.

Bench: Gareth Maybin. Maybin is a total flier for me, but with so much “chalk”, why not? He’s a decent-enough European Tour player from Northern Ireland, and could be surprisingly good. Then again, he could also miss the cut by a dozen strokes.

No-way pick: Graeme McDowell. Regular readers know that I really like McDowell’s game, and that I’m regularly following him at events. He does have very good GIR stats. However, he also has extremely weak scrambling and sand-save percentages (his PGA Tour rank, were he a member, would be somewhere in the 170’s); add that to a putter that runs hot-and-cold and the fact that he’s never finished higher than 30th in a U.S. Open, and I have to stay away this week.

Last week's results:
An indifferent week. Of my “three to watch”, Heath Slocum was the best, with a 6th-place finish. David Toms finished 29th, and Robert Allenby withdrew halfway through the first round due to illness. Current Yahoo Fantasy Golf stats: 3305 points, 79th percentile.

Until next time, best of luck to all!