New Venue, New Approach

If that still sounds incredibly swift, know that Torrey's greens are not the rounded domes of Pinehurst, the steep slopes of Winged Foot or the massive, tilted plates of Oakmont. They're big, perched saucers, with difficult flagstick positions in various spots. They're designed to hold long-iron approach shots, and Davis is hoping players will have to hit some long irons into these greens, given that Kikuyu fairways, even when dry, won't provide as much roll as traditional rye, bluegrass or bent grass.

Shaved slopes leading to chipping areas have been a feature at many U.S. Opens in recent years, and Torrey has a nifty corner-pocket chipping hollow to the left of the surface on the par-4 seventh. There will also be shaved banks behind the greens on the par-3 third (playing into the wind) and the par-4 14th (playing downwind). There's nothing behind those two greens but deep gulches. Players won't be chipping; they'll be trying heroic shots from beneath bushes, or taking penalty strokes.

The par-4 second is the shortest par 4 on the course at 389 yards, guarded by one of the longest fairway bunkers, 51 yards.

SURPRISE PICK

The selection of Torrey Pines for this year's Open was a surprise. Particularly because it beat out another California contender, Riviera Country Club, a Golden Age sweetheart that's the favorite of many a PGA Tour player. Critics sneered that Torrey Pines is the Tori Spelling of golf, assigned a starring role on reasons other than merit (in Torrey's case, location and room for all the ancillary hoopla).

Torrey Pines does sit in a gorgeous location atop Pacific cliffs, and it has a sister North Course, where a couple of holes have been converted into a massive range. But it's subjected to 66,000 rounds a year on the South. (The North gets even more play.) That's twice as much golf as on the usual Open venue, far more than even at Bethpage Black, the only other municipal or state operation to host an Open.

Torrey Pines is 51 years old, but the present architecture of the South Course dates only from a 2001 Rees Jones remodeling, privately funded, with the intention of making the course worthy of hosting a U.S. Open. It was not a lavish production. Jones was able to rebuild all greens and bunkers, but a restricted budget prevented him from rearranging the layout to take full advantage of the deep canyons that eat into portions of the plateau site. He was able to move three greens -- the third, fourth and 14th -- right to the edges, but mostly he was stuck with a seemingly uninspired routing by original architect William F. Bell. (In Bell's defense, the city has never owned the canyons, just the land on top, so he couldn't build holes playing down into them.)

Despite the efforts of "Open Doctor" Jones (see "Rees: Jones: The pleasure of his company"), Torrey Pines is not on Golf Digest's ranking of America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses, the first time an Open course has been missing since Atlanta Athletic Club in 1976. Curiously, Torrey Pines had been ranked from 1969-'75, when it had a far less compelling design than exists today.

We rank it 90th among America's 100 Greatest Public Courses, and that seems low. Under Mark Woodward, the director of golf, operations manager and head superintendent, Torrey Pines should gain appreciation by being showcased in dry, breezy June instead of chilly, soggy January.

Granted, Torrey Pines is not Pebble Beach. You don't taste the salt air at Torrey the way you do at Pebble (ranked sixth on our 100 Greatest), or face a daunting carry over crashing surf the way you do on Pebble. But Torrey Pines compares favorably with Bandon Dunes (No. 31 on our 100 Greatest list) farther up the coast in Oregon. Torrey and Bandon have the ocean as a backdrop, not a hazard, though both have holes running along cliffs above the beach.

The virtually treeless Bandon Dunes has small ravines and dramatic sand dunes to add character, and Torrey Pines has its deep, daunting canyons back in play for the first time in decades after Woodward's aggressive program that cut down the rows of eucalyptus that lined most canyons. He also transplanted namesake torrey pines (a variety so rare the law prevents outright removal) to allow the fourth fairway to be shifted closer to a bluff.