By John Hawkins
Photos By Stephen Szurlej
June 6, 2008
Sixty years After southern California last hosted a U.S. Open, the Big Ballpark on the Pacific ticks to the beat of a rush hour on nearby Interstate 5. Both giant practice greens are cluttered with serious putters by 7:15 on a Saturday morning. Conversation is minimal, although it is even quieter on the deck behind the Torrey Pines clubhouse, a plain, rectangular structure that could easily be mistaken for a county library.
The line at the starter's window is seven or eight deep, and tee times don't grow on trees. A walk-up who arrived at 5 a.m. will be lucky to get out before 9, an uncertainty that can induce tension among those who came without a game. The guy behind the glass, meanwhile, enables no delusions of grandeur. For every hotshot, there is a have or a have-not.
"Dude, you can scratch Crawford off your list," a departing single announces in a voice for everyone to hear. "I just got on Del Mar CC." As the kid grabs his carry bag and hustles toward the parking lot, all eyes turn to the starter, who lip-syncs the offending line with enough over-the-top mockery to earn serious giggles from a tough crowd.
Welcome to Caddyshack at Ridgemont High. When a Louisiana kid named David Toms won the 15-17 division of the Junior World Championships at Torrey Pines in 1984, they would have laughed you off the grounds if you predicted a U.S. Open would be there in less than 25 years. "I played it for the first time when I qualified for the U.S. Junior back in '73," says Steve Roberts, a local attorney. "I'm thinking, 'It's a PGA Tour stop. This is gonna be fabulous,' then I get here, and it's in such dreadful shape that I honestly thought we'd gone to the wrong course."
When you spend most of your adult life working for a newspaper, as longtime golf writer T.R. Reinman did for the San Diego Union-Tribune, you learn how to wrap up a half-decade of history in three sentences. "The city is broke, [the courses] get pretty [beat up] in the summer, and who knows what will happen after the Open?" Reinman says. "The place went through hell for unfathomable reasons. It has been a muny, it is a muny, and we're hoping it will remain a cut above a muny when all this is done."
What is ironic is that the city of San Diego basically tried to turn Torrey Pines into a resort several years back, which resulted in a lengthy legal battle against the Torrey Pines Municipal Golf Club—an organization of about 1,000 area golfers—and what ultimately amounted to a failed coup after an out-of-court settlement in March 2007. The short version: After a renovation of the on-site lodge, the city attempted to reserve a significant block of preferential tee times for guests at the Hilton hotel next door.
Roberts, a TPMGC member and one of the best 4-handicaps in America, negotiated a compromise that guarantees club members 10 years of unimpeded access. "Everyone came to a middle ground," he says. "Both sides gave a little and both sides got something back." If the kindler, gentler North Course is best known as the South's little brother—it has played about four strokes easier in recent Buick Invitationals—it doesn't take a U.S. Open to fill up the tee sheets at either layout.
Getting on the South can be particularly tough. So is playing it. At a TPMGC tournament in February, 64 of the 120 participants competed off handicaps of 6 or lower. Three broke 80. "The rough was a joke [by] April," says past club president John Hoffman, a scratch whose 73 made him medalist that day. "One guy took a [penalty] drop, walked over to get his bag and never found his ball."
To those with an impartial eye and a wicked sense of humor, the South is the easiest 7,643-yard golf course you'll find. Compared to the dramatic terrain at Bethpage Black, the Long Island muny that will host next year's U.S. Open, Torrey Pines is optically unimposing, a parkland sprawl with just one real forced carry for the big fellas (13th tee) and one water hazard (18th green). Despite sitting atop a bluff overlooking the world's largest ocean, the layout is quite flat. Sometimes, meat and potatoes can be beautiful.
Nowhere on earth, however, will you find a more outrageous pulchritude-to-punishment ratio. San Diego born and San Diego bred, the South has been armed from head to toe with USGA dread: a mix of hearty grasses that likely will measure about 3½ inches and make life miserable for players who hit it more than 10 yards off-line. In early May, Hercules couldn't play a shot from the stuff unless he got a break with the lie.
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