Torrey Pines South Course Review

Torrey Pines South is the best argument in America for public golf and also a lesson in what public golf costs you. The setting is extraordinary. Bluffs a hundred feet above the Pacific, paragliders overhead, and the third and the fourth playing along the cliff edge with nothing but ocean on one side. The Rees Jones rebuild before the national open stretched the course past seven thousand six hundred yards, deepened the bunkers and grew rough into something genuinely penal, and from the back tees it is a serious examination that has produced two memorable championships.

From the regular tees it is long, flat through the middle and less interesting than its reputation, which is the honest read on the architecture: a world class site with ordinary municipal holes everywhere the cliff is not in view. Conditioning swings with the season and with how many rounds the city has pushed through that week, and the poa greens are bumpy by midafternoon.

The real problem is pace. Five hours is normal here and five and a half is common, and the booking system rewards persistence over planning. At the nonresident rate it is not cheap either. Play it once for the walk along the cliffs, and take the earliest tee time you can get.