Torrey Pines a Public Jewel High Above the Pacific

Billy Casper, who won the U.S. Open in 1959 at Winged Foot and in 1966 at San Francisco's Olympic Club, was once hired by the city to rebuild Torrey's greens.

"What a jewel we have here," Casper said during a recent visit to his hometown.

William Bell turned a former Navy training base into the North and South courses, which opened in 1957. Torrey Pines was named after the rare coastal trees that are gnarled into spectacular shapes.

"I don't know if it was foresight or luck, but, I mean, how fortunate for us and people who love the game and love to be outdoors that someone was smart enough to do that back in the '50s," said attorney Jay Rains, the man most responsible for bringing the Open here. "Because if you had that land sitting there unused today, the chances of getting a public golf course built on it would be pretty small."

A 20-minute drive from downtown, Torrey Pines is synonymous with golf in San Diego. It's usually the course out-of-towners want to play.

"A lot of people around here who grew up playing out there have fond memories of dragging their bag behind them on a cart, which I think makes this Open that much more special," said Rains, the vice president of the USGA executive committee. "It's not just that it's in your hometown, it's not just it's a golf course that you can play, but it's a golf course that I think spiritually means a lot to people around here.

"For Pat or for Phil, they dragged their own bag around there when they were 12 years old. I think that's a very cool thing. For Phil Mickelson to step up on the tee on a golf course he's played since he was a kid, and play for his national championship, has got to be pretty special."

Rains got the idea for an Open at Torrey Pines in the late 1990s after the USGA awarded the 2002 Open to Bethpage Black, which is state-owned.

To get the already-tough South Course up to Open standards, a group called Friends of Torrey Pines helped raise $3.5 million to have Rees Jones, the so-called "U.S. Open Doctor," lengthen the course, redo the greens and add bunkers. The gamble paid off in 2002 when the USGA awarded this Open to Torrey Pines.

"It was a good, strong golf course before they redid it, and now it's a monster," Casper said.

The scorecard will read par 71, 7,643 yards, the longest in U.S. Open history. But USGA officials say it will actually play between 7,400 and 7,500 yards because they'll switch up the tee boxes every day.

"We all loved to play Torrey because it was a fun, hard test of golf," Mickelson said. "We used to dread it a little bit because we would finish on No. 9 and then you would have to walk back the length of two par-5s."