Tour Guide: What, If Anything, Is Interesting About Torrey Pines?

Welcome to the first edition of Tour Guide, a (tentatively named) Club TFE feature that will mostly focus on professional golf with some preview-y insights and review-y humor. It’s a free flowing notebook featuring some of the smarter observers of the pro game that will preview what lies ahead, look back at recent events, and remember tournaments of old. This week, it’s all about the annual PGA Tour event at Torrey Pines.

A Torrey Primer

By Joseph LaMagna

I have a goal of getting to all the recurring courses on the PGA Tour schedule. I’ve watched countless hours of each course on PGA Tour Live, and I’ve looked at a bunch of data for every course, but you always learn something new when you see a golf course in person for the first time. Last January, I attended the Farmers Insurance Open and finally crossed Torrey Pines off my list.

When people describe Torrey Pines (South), what are the main descriptors they use?

Generally, I think people tend to focus on the narrow fairways, the nastiness of the rough, and the overall length of the golf course. The course is often characterized as a brute. While all of those descriptors are appropriate, in my opinion, one of its most defining features is that the greens are small and most of them slope from back to front. The green sizes and slope should not be omitted from the description of the golf course.

When I walked onto the property, I already had a pretty good idea of what the greens would look like. I was still struck, however, at the back-to-front sloping on many of the greens.

If forced to pick one hole that is most representative of the entire test at Torrey Pines, well I could probably pick just about any hole. Torrey is a redundant, one-dimensional test. For the sake of conversation, I’ll choose the fifth hole, a 450-yard par 4 with a green sloped severely from back to front. You cannot afford to be above the hole to particular pin locations. Last year I watched Luke List, winner of the 2022 Farmers Insurance Open, hit a 20-foot putt 23 feet past the hole. I can attest that this was not a ShotLink error.

Another shot that stuck with me was Max Homa’s second shot of his second round on the 12th hole, a brutish par 4 that plays over 500 yards. He missed the fairway left off the tee, resulting in one of the worst lies I saw that week. From that position, he ripped a 192-yard shot up the narrow chute of the fairway, leaving himself in a prime position to get up and down and save par.

Ultimately, he missed the 6.5 foot putt for par, but the second shot was exactly the type of shot required to win at Torrey Pines. It required an enormous amount of strength and club face control to hit a shot that got him back into position to score. To win this week, players will need to hit those types of strenuous shots, leave themselves in favorable positions around the green, and convert testy up and downs.

The course sets up exceptionally well for a player like Tony Finau, a powerful, athletic player with a world class short game. He has the strength and speed to muscle shots out of the rough and the finesse around the greens to turn potential bogeys into pars. In nine starts at the Farmers Insurance Open, Finau has five top 10 finishes, eight top 25 finishes, and just one missed cut. He’s a player to keep an eye on this week.

Is Torrey Pines a good test of professional golf?

That depends on what you value. I much prefer watching professional golf at Torrey Pines to what we’re treated to each year at PGA West, a wedge fest where there is often little consequence for missing around the greens in the wrong spots. At the same time, Torrey Pines is sorely lacking in the variety department. Furthermore, with rough frequently serving as the only defense, there is often little difference in missing the fairway by just a couple of yards versus missing by 15-20 yards. Therefore, inaccurate drivers can swing with impunity off most of the tee boxes.

I’m excited to watch the tournament this week. It’s redundant and one-dimensional, but there are worse brands of redundancy and one-dimensionality on the PGA Tour. And there aren’t many more pleasant settings to watch golf than the piece of property Torrey Pines sits on, a significant additive factor to a historic tournament on the PGA Tour schedule.

Memory Lane: Phil Accused of Cheating at Torrey

By Brendan Porath

Sports Business Journal reported this month that Farmers Insurance is bailing on its title sponsorship of the PGA Tour’s annual stop at Torrey Pines. The company put its stamp on the event starting in 2010, which might look like a sleepy first run given the Ben Crane win over the likes of Michael Sim and Michael Allen.

But it was a juicy and drama-filled week all around in San Diego. Tiger Woods, the king of Torrey, remained in exile following his 2009 sex scandal but the tournament broadcast had to address his absence…awkwardly, like with the discussion of some Tom Watson comments made on a Kansas City TV station. “It’s bad for our game, “ Watson said. “It’s something he needs to get control of and a handle on and make some amends and show some humility to the public when he comes back.”

John Daly, whose final PGA Tour win would come at Torrey in 2004, showed up 100 pounds lighter after offseason stomach surgery but had quit competitive golf by Friday afternoon. With Golf Channel crews tracking him in the parking lot for the forthcoming reality show “Being John Daly,” he blurt out, “I’m done, I can’t compete. I can’t keep taking spots from guys out here playing this bad.”

Drama always followed Tiger and Long John, but arguably the most notable news came from another source: three-time Torrey winner Phil Mickelson. Scott McCarron, he of the ancho… ahem .. chest-height putter, flat called out Mickelson for cheating. This was that historic moment Phil put the loopholed Ping-Eye 2 wedge grooves in his bag to start the year. We won’t replay that entire saga but square grooves were outlawed by the USGA as of Jan. 1 that year, but a 1990 settlement between Ping and the USGA created a loophole for the Ping Eye 2. Daly was the first to put the 30-year old wedges in his bag at the start of the year, but Phil, as is often the case, made it a bigger news item and kerfuffle.

“It’s cheating and I’m appalled Phil has put it in play,” McCarron said. Many players shaded toward McCarron’s side, including midpoint leader Ryuji Imada, who was asked about that as much as his play. “I don’t agree with it,” he said. “I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t consider it cheating. I don’t agree with the fact that some guys are being able to use a wedge that’s not conforming — well, it is conforming. But it’s not.”

Always the rule-follower, Mickelson had an explanation for why he felt he was in bounds with the club in his bag. “I agree that the rule, it’s a terrible rule,” he said. “To change to something that has this kind of loophole is nuts. But it’s not up to me or any other player to interpret what the interpretation of the rule is or the spirit of the rule. I understand black and white. And I think that myself or any other player is allowed to play those clubs because they’re approved. End of story.”

Phil Mickelson on No. 3 at Torrey Pines South

Players accusing each other of cheating, decades-old clubs in play, weird legal carve-outs, Phil waxing on like a Supreme Court Justice … this all became a major dust-up that the PGA Tour had to issue a statement on to say it was “monitoring.”

The wedge was out of Phil’s bag a month later when he went to defend at Riviera. “I like and respect these players out here,” Mickelson said at Riv. “Out of respect for them, I do not want to have an advantage over anybody, whether it’s perceived or actual. So this week I won’t be playing that wedge. My point has been made.”

He did threaten to put the wedge back in the bag if the governing bodies could not get their act together and close the loophole. A separate settlement with Ping would do that later. But not after Phil got off a few more pops that seem increasingly relevant to today’s ongoing Tour vs. governing bodies rollback struggle.

“It’s cost manufacturers millions of dollars. It continues to cost them money as we now have to hire people to scan, document and store data of every groove on every single club,” he said. “It was unnecessary…and the arbitrary judgment of one (USGA) man can take a conforming club and rule it non-conforming based on his emotion. This lack of transparency has got to change. It’s killing the sport. It’s killing the manufacturers and the players.”

My eyes, they roll. As for his relationship with McCarron after he dropped the c-word on him at Torrey, the two made-up at Riviera with a face-to-face apology. “I appreciate him being a big enough man to do that,” added Phil.

One Shot from Last Week

By Will Knights

Nick Dunlap’s victory at The American Express will be a win I remember for a long time. More specifically, I’ll remember the moment he called off his caddie on the 70th hole of the tournament and proceeded to roll this 11-foot birdie dead in the heart. The putt tied Sam Burns for the lead and ensured Dunlap had the honors on the island-green 17th, which he executed and put all the pressure on Burns. The kid’s got stones.

Birdie on 16 to tie the lead!

20-year-old amateur Nick Dunlap continues to impress.
@PGATOURU | @TheAmExGolf pic.twitter.com/7OZpzWhIUF

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) January 21, 2024

Tap-Ins

By Brendan Porath

Is “Devlin’s Billabong” the most impotent and aesthetically displeasing hazard on the PGA Tour?

No. 18 at Torrey Pines South

Social media is quickly radicalizing the impressionable and unwitting on the divots-as-ground-under-repair rebellion. Fried Egg Golf’s Cameron Hurdus alerted the team to the comments section of a DP World Tour Instagram post where the prospect of having to hit out of a divot was treated as some crime against humanity. It’s important to quash this now and not even let it become the subject of legitimate or illegitimate debate.