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By Mike Vitti
PGATOUR.com ShotLink Analyst

It is once again time to get ready for the PGA TOUR League Championship draft. With an expanded roster and more rounds in the draft, though, you will need to be even better prepared entering this year's competition than you were in 2006.

So where do you start in your preparations? Well, here to help you with your picks is a quick draft primer and charts for each of the two formats, providing an objective ranking of the players based on key statistics from the 2006 season.

Head-to-Head Match Play
In the new match play head-to-head format, scoring-based statistics should be the focus of your preparation, as the more holes that your players can make birdies on and avoid bogeys the better your chances for winning your matches. Sounds simple right? It is, but with the volume of scoring stats available on PGATOUR.com it can also be a daunting task to sift through them all. To help in your planning, I have created a chart that ranks players based on the annual averages in five statistics from the 2005 season.

Percentage of cuts made
The actual number of cuts made is important, but it can be misleading for players who play in a lot of events. The percentage of cuts made identifies those players who are making it to the weekend on a consistent basis.

Adjusted scoring average
This is the official scoring average used for the scoring title on TOUR. It is adjusted each round and is a more accurate measure of scoring performance.

Birdie average
This is the number of birdies a player averages per round. The higher this number is the more birdies -- definitely a strength in match play.

Bogey Average
The bogey average is not a regularly tracked statistic, but one that was created specifically for this draft guide. It is simply the average number of over-par holes that a player recorded per round in 2006. Obviously for this statistic the lower the average is the better.

Bounce back percentage
This is an interesting statistic that many people do not pay a lot of attention to, but one that could be useful in choosing players for the match play format. A bounce back is when a player records a score of eagle or birdie on the hole immediately after one where he recorded a bogey or worse, and the percentage is the rate at which a player has accomplished this task. This stat could help you identify players who have a better chance of getting a hole back after losing one for your team.

Link to Guide
Each of the above stats has been collected into one handy draft guide that you can find here.

I have also ranked the players based on their overall performance in these statistics. The usual suspects of Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson are at the top, but you may also want to consider Ian Poulter, Luke Donald and John Senden as potential first-round picks in this format.

Rotisserie Golf
PGA TOUR League Championship Roto golf is back this year, but there have been a few changes. Last year the 10 statistics chosen were almost all total summary statistics, making the game rely too much on picking players each week based on whether or not they would make the cut and not on the statistical aspect of their performances. This year having your players make the cut is still very important, but there is now a balanced mix of average and summary stats. The specific changes to the stats were:

Now what does all of this mean come draft time? Well, you will still have to focus on the actual statistics in the game, but there is a way to make your assessment of players easier by reducing the number of stats you have to focus your attention on in preparation for the draft. I would suggest look at seven statistics in assessing players for a roto league draft and they are:

Percentage of measured drives over 300 yards
On drives used to measure the official driving distance, this is the percentage of those drives that a player hits at least 300 yards or more.

Driving accuracy
The percentage of a player's tee shots on par 4s and par 5s that safely find the fairway.

Greens in regulation
The percentage of time a player lands his ball on the green and subsequently has a chance to putt for a birdie or eagle.

Scrambling
The percentage of time a player makes par or better after missing the green in regulation.

Putting average
The average number of putts a player needs to get the ball in the hole after hitting the green in regulation.

Par breaker percentage
This stat can be used to quickly assess the total birdie, total eagle and scoring stats. This stat is the percentage of time that a player makes better than par on all stroke play holes attempted. The higher this percentage is the better.

Sand saves per event
This is a stat that was specifically created for assessing players for a roto draft. In the roto game cumulative sand saves are one of the statistics that you are using for competition. However, judging players by sand save percentage can be misleading, as this does not tell you how frequently they attempted a bunker escape. The sand saves per event stat is simply the average number of times per event that a player had in 2006, and the more they had the better they might be in helping your team in this area.

Link to Guide
Each of the above stats has been collected into one handy draft guide that you can find here.

The players have also been ranked based on their overall performance in these statistics in 2006. Of course Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson are at the top part of the list, but you may be surprised to see that Steve Stricker is actually the highest-ranked player based on his performance in 2006. Other players you may want to consider in the first couple rounds of your draft are Robert Allenby, Trevor Immelman and David Toms.