Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines – 2025 Preview

The PGA Tour’s west coast swing continues this Wednesday with the Farmers Insurance Open featuring the scenic Torrey Pines South Golf Course in La Jolla, California. Torrey Pines has hosted this event every year since 1968. Lying on land occupied by an anti-aircraft battery during World War II, it is one of America’s most scenic course layouts atop coastal bluffs north of San Diego with dazzling views of the Pacific Ocean.

Thanks to the frequent morning fog delays and early sunsets, there will be two courses utilized this week. Both are owned and maintained by the City of San Diego. Golfers will play both the North and South courses once before the cut on Friday. Only the South course will be used on the weekend. While the North course plays much easier and is more tree-lined, the South course sits much closer to the Pacific bringing possible weather effects into play. It is a massively lengthy track. In fact, it is the longest annual Tour course in the rotation, stretching over 7,700 yards.

Other than the one round on the North Course, the scoring this week will be the complete opposite of the birdie-fests we have seen for the first three events of this year. The South Course is the seventh-most difficult layout on Tour. The course provides no let-up and forces players to use every club in their bag. Unlike the previous few events, Torrey Pines offers a true barometer on the state of a golfer’s all-around game early in the 2025 season.

Even though it’s played at sea level, Torrey Pines plays even longer than the scorecard yardage due to softer fairways and the cooler January air. Every golfer will need to dust off the cobwebs from their long irons because they will be needed here. Winning scores at this event have been 15-under par or less in 11 of the past 12 years.

This is a “sticky” course when looking at the type of players who have success. Par will be a good score on a majority of the holes. With it being such a long track, bombers have a definite advantage. Yet the winners’ list has also been filled with elite scramblers and Poa putting specialists. Ideally, players who are long and accurate off the tee and who also excel with their short game, particularly on Poa greens, have the best chance for success.

The Field

It’s the first tough test of the new calendar year, and while some of the elite names have shown up to take on the challenge, many are sitting out this week. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler remains out with a hand injury while World No. 2 Xander Schauffele is also skipping the event with an undisclosed injury. And then on Sunday, World No. 4 Collin Morikawa withdrew due to “illness”.

Top-30 players in attendance include Hideki Matsuyama, Ludvig Aberg, Keegan Bradley, Sahith Theegala, Tony Finau, Aaron Rai, Maverick McNealy, Shane Lowry, and Akshay Bhatia. Matthieu Pavon returns as the defending champion, while past champions Max Homa, Luke List, Justin Rose, Jason Day, and Brandt Snedeker are also entered.

The tournament will be played from Wednesday to Saturday for the fourth consecutive year to appease the NFL playoff schedule. We are back to a standard 36-hole cut this week with the top 65 and ties playing the weekend. Only the South Course is equipped with ShotLink data. This is the last chance for players to earn a spot in next week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-AM. The top five FedExCup points earners from the Sony Open, The American Express, and this week’s Farmers Insurance Open will gain entry into next week’s “Signature Event.”

Torrey Pines – Course History

One of the most famous municipal golf properties in the country, Torrey Pines was designed by William Bell in 1957. Located at the previous site of Camp Callan, a U.S. Army installation, it was built on a tract of land with mountains to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Since 1968, Torrey Pines has hosted the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open, which was originally known as the San Diego Open. During its first few decades, the South Course was around 6,850 yards. The South Course was first renovated in the late 1970s by local hero Billy Casper.

It was then completely redesigned by Rees Jones in 2001. Jones moved multiple greens, doubled the number of bunkers, added ten new tee boxes, and extended the yardage to a whopping 7,607 yards. He also brought several coastal canyons into play, namely on the 3rd and 14th holes. The goal was to make the course more competitive for the modern-day player. Jones’s efforts were rewarded as the course hosted the 2008 U.S. Open.

Again in 2019, Rees Jones completed another renovation of the South Course. Bunkers were shifted and refurbished on five different holes. Greens were repositioned closer to canyons to bring more of an element of danger into play. Jones also extended the course another 150+ yards. Two years after this renovation, the South Course was again awarded the U.S. Open in 2021.

As for the North Course, it stood the test of time until it was finally renovated in 2016 by Tom Weiskopf. He overhauled the greens and created more challenging pin positions, eliminated more than a dozen bunkers, and flipped the nines so that the routing now finishes along the coast. He also stretched the course out to its current length.

Finish Position and Strokes Gained History at Torrey Pines (2016-2024)

This includes the average finish position and Strokes Gained per round. Players are sorted by SG: Total. Torrey Pines South is the 11th most predictive annual course on Tour.