Torrey Pines Golf Course is a 36-hole municipal

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various Golf club, clubs to hit a Golf ball, ball into a series of holes on a golf course, course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standa ...

facility in University City, a community of

San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

, California. The course sits on the coastal cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, just south of

Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve is a coastal state park in San Diego, California. The reserve is one of the wildest stretches of land on the Southern California coast, covering . It is bordered immediately to the south by Torrey Pines Golf Co ...

. Opened in 1957, it was built on the site of Camp Callan, a U.S. Army installation during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Torrey Pines has two 18-hole courses, North and South, designed by

William Francis Bell William Francis Bell (August 8, 1918 – September 20, 1984) was a golf course architect, active from the 1960s into the early 1980s. Biography William Francis Bell was born in Pasadena, California, the son of noted architect William Park Bell, ...

. The course is named for the Torrey pine, a rare tree that grows in the area. Since the late 1960s, Torrey Pines has hosted the

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also known as the PGA Tour, the PGA Tour Champion ...

's Farmers Insurance Open, originally known as the San Diego Open. Held annually in January or February, the tournament uses both courses for the first two rounds and the South Course for the final two rounds. The South Course has hosted two U.S. Open championships:

Tiger Woods Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer. He is tied for first in List of golfers with most PGA Tour wins, PGA Tour wins, ranks second in List of men's major championships winning golfers, men's m ...

won in

2008 2008 was designated as: *International Year of Languages *International Year of Planet Earth *International Year of the Potato *International Year of Sanitation The Great Recession, a worldwide recession which began in 2007, continued throu ...

and

Jon Rahm Jon Rahm Rodríguez (born 10 November 1994) is a Spanish professional golfer. He was number one in the World Amateur Golf Ranking for a then record 60 weeks and later became world number one in the Official World Golf Ranking, first achiev ...

won in

2021 Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...

. Torrey Pines hosted the Genesis Invitational in February 2025 after the tournament's home course, the Riviera Country Club, was affected by the Southern California wildfires. Torrey Pines Golf Course clubhouse

2008 U.S. Open

won the 2008 U.S. Open over Rocco Mediate in a 19-hole Monday playoff. After completing the 18-hole playoff on the South Course tied at even par 71, they went to sudden-death on the 91st hole, played on the par-4 7th hole. Mediate had trouble off of the tee and made bogey, while Woods made par to gain his third U.S. Open and fourteenth career

major Major most commonly refers to: * Major (rank), a military rank * Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits * People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames * Major and minor in musi ...

title, which put him just four behind

Jack Nicklaus Jack William Nicklaus (; born January 21, 1940), nicknamed "the Golden Bear", is an American retired professional golfer and List of golf courses designed by Jack Nicklaus, golf course designer. He is widely considered to be one of the greate ...

. He birdied the final hole on Sunday to force the playoff and again on Monday to extend it. Woods, age 32, won while playing with a stress fracture and torn ACL; this was his last major title until

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

. This was the last U.S. Open to feature an 18-hole playoff (the USGA changed the U.S. Open playoff format to a two-hole aggregate playoff in 2018); as of 2025, it was also the most recent time the U.S. Open ended in a playoff.

Popular culture

Torrey Pines is a featured golf course in the '' Links: The Challenge of Golf'' (1990), '' Microsoft Golf 2.0'' (1995), '' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003'', '' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10'', '' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13,'' and '' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14''. Scott Peterson, previously on

death row Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting executio ...

for the murder of his wife Laci, was arrested in the parking lot of Torrey Pines in

Major tournaments hosted

North Course

The North Course is shorter (from the men's tees) and rated less difficult than the South Course. All measurements are made in yards. :

South Course

At , the South Course is the longest course played in a regular

event.

References

External links

Torrey Pines Golf Course official site

C.Michael Hogan (2008) "Torrey Pine: ''Pinus torreyana''", Globaltwitcher, ed. N. Stromberg

Torrey Pines Municipal Golf Club
Golf clubs and courses in California La Jolla, San Diego Sports venues in San Diego Golf clubs and courses designed by Rees Jones Sports venues completed in 1957 1957 establishments in California Trees in culture