Torrey Pines opened in 1957, the brainchild of legendary golf course architect William F. Bell (Dell Urich Golf Course in Tucson) on the site of Camp Callan, a naval training center during World War II. While Bell’s father, William P. Bell, sometimes get credit as an original architect on the project, in fact he’d been dead for four years at the time construction started.
There are two 18-hole championship courses on the property, the North Course and the South Course, which get more than 100,000 rounds a year combined. It’s a public facility owned and maintained by the City of San Diego and touts itself as the nation’s foremost municipal golf course.
It’s the largest public facility in the U.S. Since the late 1960s, Torrey Pines has hosted the Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour, held annually in January or February. The tournament uses both courses for the first two rounds and the South Course for rounds three and four. Nine holes on the North Course are currently closed for renovations.
The South Course was remodeled by Rees Jones in 2002 and later hosted the 2008 U.S. Open, won by Tiger Woods in dramatic fashion over Rocco Mediate in a 19-hole Monday playoff. It was Woods’ 3rd U.S. Open title and his 14th and final major victory. Oh, and he did it while playing on a broken left leg and torn ACL. The South Course has already been selected to host the 2021 U.S. Open, which will be its 3rd USGA Championship (1998 U.S. Amateur Public Links) and 2nd U.S. Open.
The wife and I were in La Jolla for the wedding of a college buddy of mine, and I told her it would be great if we could play the South Course. We love golf! Problem is, it’s $229 to play it right now if you’re not a San Diego resident… unless you can get on the tee sheet for the twilight rate. The twilight rate is a little less painful $137 beginning at 2:00p through April 18th when the times change, but as with any twilight rate, there’s no guarantee you’ll finish your round. To make matters more difficult, if you’re a non-resident, you can’t get on the waiting list until the morning you want to play, and you have to sign-up in-person.
We showed up at 8:00a and got on the waiting list. When I saw the starter add our names to the top of the 2nd page, I thought to myself, “That doesn’t look very promising.” The starter told us to come back at 1:30p and to be prepared to wait about an hour-and-a-half to get on.
But when we showed up to check-in at around 1:25p, he asked us if we were ready to go, and just like that, we were off! The starter also told us that the twosome we were playing with was the first name on the sheet at 5:30a that morning, “So don’t tell em you got here at eight.”
The South Course plays 7,707 yards from the Black Tees, which on the scorecard reads, “Permission Only.” The South plays 7,051 yards from the Blue Tees (if your handicap is 0-5, these are the recommended tees) to a Par of 72, a course rating of 75.3, and a slope of 137. Here are some of the highlights of the round:
Holes Worth Writing Home About
The South Course is situated atop the coastal cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean some hundred yards below. While I’m told both courses offer ocean views, the South Course plays directly into the Pacific on the 3rd hole and adjacent to it on the 4th hole (where you’re going to see most of the paragliders). There’s also a vast, natural canyon with deep ravines you’re forced to carry on a couple of shots.
The best hole on the front nine is the course’s signature hole, the 159-yard Par 3 3rd. The hole plays straight downhill, usually 2-3 clubs less than its yardage, directly toward the endless expanse of the Pacific. I measured the front right pin at 146 yards, but because there was also a right to left wind blowing off the cliffs to the right, I chose a 9-iron. I flushed it! It never left the flagstick, but it didn’t carry either. Turns out the wind was blowing somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15 mph.
I ended up in the greenside bunker short and right, and I couldn’t get up and down. Talk about an intimidating tee shot! You have to negotiate some pretty strong winds from an exposed tee box, and anything short, long, or left will find its way into an unplayable bushy area, making a bailout right the popular play.
The best hole on the back nine is the 13th. It’s a 523-yard Par 5. There are four Par 5s on the South Course, and they measure just 530, 538, 523, and 525 yards respectively. But depending on what the wind is doing, you’re not hitting any of them in two. Even though the 13th is usually playing downwind, it feels all but impossible.
The one thing that becomes abundantly clear very early on is that you have to hit fairways out on the South Course. They don’t make it easy either. In some places, the fairway is really narrow, only 20-30 yards wide, but you don’t know it until you get down there. They’re not hosting the U.S. Open until 2021, but the course could be ready by next week if it needed to be. That’s how long and thick the rough already is. It’s really lush Kikuyugrass, and boy is it penal.
On several occasions, the guys we were playing with missed the fairway by only a few yards but still couldn’t find their ball. The other thing you fail to realize until you’re actually in the fairways is how moundy, hilly, and undulating they are. I know now from my days in Golf Course Design that that kind of camouflaging is done by the course architect intentionally.
But I digress. Back to the 13th. It’s a beast of a hole. You hit your tee shot from the tee shot above to the fairway below, and you think you’ve got a shot at going for the green in two. That, in and of itself, is a difficult shot to a narrow, elevated green protected by three rows of tiered bunkers both short right and short left. What you fail to see is the deep swale that bottoms out about 120 yards from the green. From there, it’s a blind shot to the green, making the likely miss a little long. There’s a bunker there too.
Despite the favorable wind direction, the hole usually plays one more club into the green. There’s also a bunker behind it to collect anything wayward. The hole usually plays one more club into the green, in spite of the favorable wind direction. This is an amazing hole, and there’s nothing wrong with walking away with a par.
The only other hole I will mention here (because I rarely mention three) is the Par 5 18th. It’s the only hole on the course with water on it, a small, well-placed pond short and left of the green called “Devlin’s Billabong.” I’m not sure what a billabong is, but if you still decide to go for the green in two, a safe play is to aim at the narrow passageway between the pond left and the greenside bunker right. I think the back nine is easier than the front because it’s not as exposed to the wind.
All the greens at Torrey Pines are Poa annua. You won’t usually hear me say anything nice about Poa greens, but today, I will. The greens were great. Even though there were really small in size, I found them to play firm and fast. Yet they were still soft enough to allow ball marks on our approach shots. I also found them to play firm enough that there was a little roll-out on just about every shot I hit. The ball released, and there wasn’t a lot of check. I also found the cut around the greens to be interesting. I counted three, progressively longer cuts of grass: green, fringe, and then collar. Each cut was longer than the previous.
Despite the fact that this course gets hammered by public play on a daily basis, it’s in immaculate shape.
Quiet Please…
Much like Bethpage Black on Long Island, Torrey Pines has a unique method to ensure public access to the course. On weekends, individuals arrive as early as 6:00p the night before to get in line for the first-come, first-serve tee times handed out from sunrise until the first reservations at 7:30a.
After you pay for your round is when it gets a little screwy. If you want to rent a golf cart, you have to do it in the golf shop. You can walk, but the course is pretty hilly, and I wouldn’t recommend it without a pull cart. Remember, you pay for your round with the starter but pay separately for your cart in the golf shop. For me and the wife to ride, it was only $25 total.
While you’re there, be sure to wander into all the corners of the golf shop. There you’ll find pictures of many of Tiger Woods’ junior golfing exploits over the years. He spent a lot of time winning at Torrey, and there are a lot of really dorky-looking junior tournament photos. My favorites are the ones where Woods is wearing both glasses and braces.
We were hungry at the turn because we’d planned to grab a sandwich or something during what we thought was going to be a 90-minute wait. That went out the window when we were ushered to the first tee. So at the turn, we visited the halfway house. Two hot dogs, two beers, and a bag of chips cost us $31 + tip. But the food was good, and it was enough to keep us going.
As she was walking up to the tee on the 2nd hole, my wife nearly stepped on a snake, and when she stopped to take a closer look, she noticed a small rattle. It was a baby rattlesnake! To put it mildly, that would have really ruined our day.
You wouldn’t think there would be rattlesnakes on a golf course near the ocean, but there’s plenty of desert brush in the canyons and ravines bordering several of the holes. I even saw some prickly pear cactus. So, needless to say, be on the lookout for snakes at Torrey Pines.
Torrey Pines is named after the Torrey Pine, a rare tree that grows in the wild only along this local stretch of San Diego coastline and on Santa Rosa Island. The tree is distinguished by its clusters of five pine needles.
Fore!
The best shot of the day came on the Par 4 14th hole. It was hit by my wife, and I’m just lucky I was in the perfect position to witness it. I was standing just off the green when she nearly pitched in for a par. I saw it hit the stick, and she was left with a tap-in bogey.
I know what you’re thinking: “Big deal.” But my wife has only been playing for about a year-and-a-half. Torrey Pines is hard! I was really happy with the five-over 77 I shot given the fact the course rating is over 75, and now that I know where to hit it, I’m sure I would do even better next time. But for someone who’s played fewer than a dozen rounds in her golfing life, nearly holing-out for par on this iconic golf course was pretty sweet.
While We’re Young
We teed off at around 1:45p and still got the twilight rate. Tee times are staggered ten minutes apart, and there was about a 20-minute gap between us and the group ahead. We were moving along at a pretty good clip without having to wait to hit a single shot (with a stop at the halfway house, mind you) until we got to the long Par 3 11th. Because the 214-yard hole was playing straight into the wind, there was a 20+ minute wait.
That was right about the time the marine layer started rolling back in and the temperature really dropped. It was really cold coming in! Up to that point, it had been an absolutely perfect day. The sun came out, and it got up to about 65 degrees. By the time we got back to the parking lot, the sun was setting. It had been almost five hours since we teed off, and my wife I knew that if we hadn’t started when we did, we probably would’ve never finished. And that would have been unacceptable.
Next On the Tee
We’re going to try to play The Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale one more time before we graduate. We keep having to reschedule, and my buddy who works out there just put in his two week’s notice. Time is running out, and we don’t want to have to pay the $319 it costs to get out there before 3:00p ($244 after 3:00p). I hear the scaffolding from the Waste Management Phoenix Open is still up and around the infamous Par 3 16th hole. I want to see what it’s like to play the hole as if I was a Tour player.