Waiting In Line At Torrey Pines

The PGA website has a nice interview with Torrey Pines’ director of golf. I had to chuckle at the question about the overnight lines because that’s almost exactly what I did to get on the course this past summer when I visited San Diego. I arrived at the course at 5 am, to find there was already a line. The procedure is that you put your bag in line outside the pay window and wait to fill in a foursome. The attendant will fill in groups from the next available person in line. In my case, the first eight in line were foursomes. The next guys in line were a twosome, so the attendant called out “two for south.” The guy in front of me was a single, as was I, so we joined that group and were off just after sunrise.

PGA.com: You have lines of players ready to play each day, some of whom even camp out overnight? But you don’t get too behind on pace of play, do you?

DeBock: It goes along with when we talked about the difficulty of the course. The harder the course plays, the longer the rounds are going to take. Right now, the rough is high enough that it’s really tough to find your golf ball if you hit it in there. Furthermore, the South course is cart path only so that’s going to add a few minutes. We have a marshall program and they do what they can, but you can only do so much. We encourage players to be mindful of others and to play ready golf, but unfortunately, it’s not abnormal for a round of golf to take five hours on the South course. The North course will tend to play 20-30 minutes quicker.