Torrey Pines North Course

William F. Bell designed Torrey Pines South and North together as a thirty-six-hole municipal complex on the La Jolla cliff-top in 1957, on a parcel of San Diego County land that the city had bought from the Torrey family in the 1950s. The South Course is the better-known of the two — host of the U.S. Open in 2008 (Tiger Woods) and 2021 (Jon Rahm) — but the North Course gets played alongside it during the first two rounds of the Farmers Insurance Open every January, and Tom Weiskopf renovated the North in 2016 to bring it closer to championship setup standards.

The scorecard reads 7,258 yards from the back markers, par 72, with a slope of 134 and a course rating of 74.8. The four par-3s sit between 202 and 241 yards. The 241-yard third is the longest one-shotter and plays directly across a Pacific clifftop drop with the ocean visible right of the green. The four par-5s range from 520 to 556 yards. The 556-yard ninth is reachable in two for the modern long hitter, particularly when the trade wind cooperates.

The number-one handicap is the 495-yard sixth — a long par-4 with an approach into a green that sits on the cliff edge, with anything missed right falling into Pacific surf. The 486-yard second-hardest and the 479-yard third-hardest are both long par-4s on the back nine. Three of the top-three are par-4s, which is the slope-rating signal that scoring on the North happens on the par-5s and the par-4s are exposure.

The San Diego coastal climate keeps Torrey Pines playable year-round, with the prime window running October through May when the marine layer is less aggressive. Summer mornings often have a six-mile-an-hour onshore breeze that builds into the afternoon trade wind by 1pm. The North Course is municipal-access — any golfer with a tee time can play it — and the green fees are among the most reasonable for ocean-cliff golf in the United States.