Torrey Pines and the game’s biggest superstar delivered one of the greatest shows in the history of all majors, and the folks who hosted the party already had the next invitations engraved.
The people from Far Hills, N.J., in the blue coats politely nodded and smiled—and then very much went silent for a couple of years.
3 Jon Rahm emerges on the back nine from a pack of show ponies with birdies on the last two holes to shoot four-under 67 and beats Louis Oosthuizen by one shot … two weeks after Rahm tested positive for COVID-19 while dominating the Memorial … on Father’s Day with his wife and 2-month-old son looking on … at one of his favorite courses and places in the world.
And then there was the monumental collapse of Bryson DeChambeau and his inward 44.
“Another home run,” Rees Jones, the Torrey Pines South architect, said on the phone on Sunday night while having dinner with his wife at The Lodge at Torrey Pines.
“That’s really what you’re trying to do, have the cream rise to the top, and it certainly did.
Despite being the anchor course for a PGA Tour event every year, it gets raked for being too straight, too predictable, and maybe too public in its birthright as a municipal layout.
Torrey proved once again that between the USGA’s setup and just the plain old nature of the course, that great things can happen here.
This time around, the fairways weren’t overly narrow and the rough was up, but either by design or growing circumstances this spring, the deep stuff was spotty and not overly brutal.
The way it sets up, you’ve got to be able to put the ball in the fairway, control your irons, and you’ve really got to putt well out here.
Going into Sunday, two short hitters, Mackenzie Hughes and Russell Henley, were tied for the lead with a 38-year-old mid-range guy, Oosthuizen.
“You have guys who are long hitters, guys who are short hitters, a lot of different strategies, and it comes down to execution,” Phil Mickelson said.
After shooting 75 on Sunday to finish at 11 over, Mickelson praised the fourth-round setup by the USGA’s John Bodenhamer because it kept some of the easier holes scoreable while accentuating the challenges on the toughest holes.
“With the firmer greens, yes, it’s going to be more difficult, but there’s still opportunities on certain holes,” Mickelson said.
There’s been speculation of late that the USGA will emphasize a tight core of its traditional venues—”cathedrals of the game,” Bodenhamer said this week—with maybe only a few “others” sprinkled in.
“After what we saw this week I would thnk Torrey Pines would be part of the rotation,” Jones said, “because it’s so well-accepted by the players.
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