Take a poll of your golf buddies and you’ll hear a lot about different golf destinations both near and far.
Some of the most popular golf destinations that you’ll hear about include names like Augusta, Scottsdale, Myrtle Beach and Las Vegas.
Golfers want to play where the pros play. It inspires them to play pro-style courses designed to challenge even the best of the best.
Torrey Pines: The Farmers Insurance Open
Annually, as pro golf cranks up and the PGA Tour makes its way to San Diego, the Farmers Insurance Open becomes a national and even worldwide golf spotlight. Torrey Pines in my own backyard takes the stage of the golf world for a moment and gets a nod from many golfers to add the course to their golf destination wish list.
Golfers just want to play where the pros play. Golfers want to hit from tee boxes where Tiger Woods made historic rounds replayed on ESPN and the Golf Channel. Golfers want to play at the place where John Rahm goes for a follow-up tournament victory after his performance at the American Express. They just want to play where the pros get challenged and rewarded for solid and smart golf.
This week’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines should not disappoint most golfers. It has traditionally offered some exciting rounds of golf from some of the biggest names in golf. I don’t anticipate seeing too many letdowns even if folks are still livid about LIV Golf and its tour.
The PGA Tour hitting tour draws golfers from all around the world. It even attracts some hangers-on who want to test their skills against the course in post-tournament rounds. Even the video game PGA Tour 2K23 has added Torrey Pines to its list of courses.
Torrey Pines is in PGA terms is of course Torrey Pines South, not the North course commonly known by many San Diego residents as the “other one.” As residents of San Diego, many local golfers have played at least one or both courses at any given time. At Torrey Pines, resident rates are pennies on the dollar compared to non-resident rates. Once you’ve played it with the beach in view and the coastal breeze blowing against your face, you will definitely say that it was worthwhile.
If you have a dream destination in mind, don’t give up hope. Stay inspired!
It takes persistence to keep going after your dreams. It takes a plan to go for your dreams. It takes patience to go after your dreams. But it also takes a perseverance. You’ve got to keep pursuing your dreams, even when it seems so out of range that it’s out of sight.
What Makes San Diego Special
All dream golf destinations are not designed alike. That’s what is so beautiful about such a list of golf vacation destinations.
Aside from Torrey Pines, San Diego offers plenty of golf courses regionally. Many of these courses are the reason that San Diego is a such a golfer’s paradise. For us, the golf season never truly ends around here. We just need to shake of some of this recent rain that left the greens a little slow and soggy, and then we’re back on again.
My personal favorite golf courses in the San Diego region keep me occupied often. Among my big ticket golf destinations I always include neighboring locations like Pala and Temecula as well as other areas like Palm Springs.
I like to plan my play and try my best to work my plan after some careful game analysis and reflection.
Most of all, wherever you end up playing, you’ve got to keep on swinging.
In golf your strengths and weaknesses will always be there. If you could improve your weaknesses, you would improve your game.
Harvey Penick
As I dip in and out of watching the early rounds of the Farmers Invitational, I know that it has been something of a desire for many to play our local Torrey Pines course. I know the familiar coastal views and the lush green fairways appear even more majestic now that we cannot travel in hordes of rowdy fans trailing Tiger, DJ and Brooks to rival our Phoenix Open golf bros with this COVID-19 fan restriction, but the course still appears to be challenging from what I have seen on TV so far. All those in contention for the lead (or even a share of the lead at the least) have one thing in common: they’re all playing the same course and facing similar challenges.
I see the course as both challenger and competitor. It has been designed to not simply offer too many “gimme” holes in the form of easily reachable in 2 par 4s or simple par 5s that are just a mere 15 to 20 yards longer than the longest par 4 on the course. Course design of late has seemed to taken a less is more approach that somehow leaves most Saturday and Sunday golfers seething with some sort of sadistic sensation of seeking more as their course designs dumbfoundedly develop desires as they both defeat and dissatisfy the average duffer at the same time. In other words, plenty of folks are not getting plenty of pleasure out o these course designs but they keep coming back for more like gluttons for punishment.
It is simply by design now and more apparent when we see championship courses that might have boasted of a challenging par 5 last year that the tournament committee has unanimously and hilariously opted to convert to an extensive par 4 for this year’s tournament. Course design typically pits a full roster of FedEx Cup chasers against the course and its course designers and groundskeepers. Those pin placements are so intricate and whatever clipping or trimming level that they are using for these greens with this mixed in sand are enough to keep your head spinning from day to day. But whoever created island greens or bunker-guarded greens just plain has some aggression issues that need to be worked out. I can only imagine what it does for these guys seeking FedEx Cup points who have braved courses from Dubai to Mexico in the off season, only to face the return of the PGATour season with a kickstart in Hawaii and the newly-COVID-cleared West Coast Swing kickoff at Torrey Pines (and we’ll see from there).
So what does that mean for us so-called regular golfers?
Past Championship Courses Still Present Challenges
I played Carlton Oaks many times before I realized that it had hosted PGA and Canadian Tour Qualifying Tournaments, NCAA Western Regional and Championship events, Junior World, The American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) and many other professional, collegiate and amateur events. One guy remarked when I got my first par on the course a few years ago that scoring well on that course and keeping it in the low 90s is feat within itself for a weekend golfer. I shrugged it off, but then later I began to realize how much playing practice rounds and multiple tournament rounds does to a golfer’s advantage within a week.
I guess if a few of us played the same course again and again, even something like Carlton Oaks, we should see some marked improvement over our scorecards, too. Some would get a better feel for the course in general, other would hone in on those special touches around the green to get that to work for them. In other words, we would have time to tackle the course based on past and present experiences and make note in our own little yardage books that very same hole where the fast greens veered to the right now have a sudden speed drop within 2 inches of the hole.
Chisel the Course into Chunks
Armed with that knowledge, I would probably shave a few strokes off here and there. My problem is that it took an article in Today’s Golfer to open my eyes to what a round of golf really come down to in terms of strokes. “Golf’s Most Wanted Shots” opened my eyes like I said to how much short game focus would be required to shave strokes off the scorecard quickly and repeatedly.
The main shot of any round is putting. Say what? Every hole doesn’t require a drive off the tee. Every hole doesn’t require an approach shot or layup. But each and every hole requires you to putt. So, if that’s the case, improve your putting skills and start to improve your scores. Combine wedge shots, chip shots and bunker play and you have another 13 strokes or so added to 35 putts which makes for 48. Well, man, I shot that on the back 9 alone a few times on a good day.
What I am saying is that we look at the game from the wrong perspective. We tend to rally behind DJ, Brooks, Tiger and a few others because they crush that ball off the tee and send us into a frenzy over what is not even a major factor in the scoring calculation of a full round. Driving counts. It just doesn’t count as much as we make it seem like it should.
If we chisel down the course into chunks, then we can approach each hole with analysis and anticipation. We can design a strategy (Plan A) for if we take care of business and launch a solid tee shot into the fairway at approximately 200+ yards. But, if need be, we have a recovery strategy (Plan B) where we select a long distance hybrid after a weak tee shot landed us at an odd angle 180 yards from the green and just off the fairway in the early signs of the rough that our fairway woods won’t be able to cut through at all. That way we keep the emotions out of it. That way we don’t lose it and toss clubs into lakes or trees. We simply assess the results of our last attempt and make an adjust prior to taking action with our next attempt. Other ideas on how this can help lower scores are out there in the blogosphere.
I have included part of my process for planning my play that i used in 2017 and 2018 as I began to approach golf with a different mindset. These are visuals that I use based upon the current scorecard available on www.greenskeeper.org and most discount tee time sites. This process helps me develop my attack plan hole by hole in a planning mode that I try to translate onto the course without losing my way or getting too cocky if it’s going good. Much like other golf bloggers out here, I can admit when I lose sight of the goal or focus on the immediate action in the moment.
As I continue to work on my game, I am going to watch Brooks and DJ clobber those tee shots. I am going to shout and howl when that titanium plate makes contact with that dimpled synthetic ball, sending it to heights and distances that even send the most popular golf shot trackers out of orbit. But I will know deep down inside that I need to watch those putting techniques from the types of John Rahm, Patrick Reed, Kevin Na and Webb Simpson
MyBreaking90 