Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines – 2026 Preview

The PGA Tour’s west coast swing continues 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 to almost 7,800 yards.

Scoring this week should be a complete reversal from last week’s birdie-fest at The American Express. Torrey Pines’ South Course ranks as the fifth-most difficult layout on Tour, offering no let-up and forcing players to use every club in the bag. It serves as a true barometer of a golfer’s all-around game early in the 2026 season.

Even at sea level, Torrey Pines plays longer than the scorecard yardage due to softer fairways and the cooler January air. Long irons will be unavoidable, and players will need to shake off any early-season rust quickly. That challenge is reflected on the leaderboard, as winning scores here have been 15-under par or lower in 12 of the past 13 years.

Torrey Pines is a “sticky” course when it comes to the profile of players who find success. Par is a good score on the majority of holes, and with the course’s length, bombers and long-iron standouts hold a clear advantage. That said, the winners’ list is also dotted with elite scramblers and players who thrive on Poa annua greens.

The Field

It’s the first tough test of the new calendar year, and all eyes will be on Brooks Koepka, the five-time major champion who returns to the PGA Tour after spending the last four years at LIV Golf. Koepka announced in December that he would be leaving LIV Golf, and three weeks later returned to the PGA Tour through the “Returning Member Program,” which allows the five-time major champion to rejoin with certain restrictions. Chief among them is ineligibility for signature events unless he qualifies, making non-signature stops like the Farmers Insurance Open a natural fit on his schedule. His inclusion also won’t displace another Tour member. This week’s field will feature 147 players—the standard 144, plus Koepka, with two additional players added from the alternate list to complete threesomes.

10 of the top 20 players in the world are in the field including Xander Schauffele, J.J. Spaun, Justin Rose, Hideki Matsuyama, Keegan Bradley, Chris Gotterup, Ludvig Aberg, Cameron Young, Patrick Cantlay, Alex Noren, and returning champion, Harris English.

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 the first signature event of the year in two weeks at the 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 a spot in the field at Pebble Beach.

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 (2016-2025)

This includes the average finish position and Strokes Gained per round since 2016. Players are sorted by SG: Total. Torrey Pines South is the 13th most predictive course on Tour.

Torrey Pines South – Course Features

With the one round at the North Course not using ShotLink/Strokes Gained data, there will not be any stat correlations for this event since the data is incomplete.

Enormous length, narrow fairways, deep rough, criminally tough greens – these are just a few of the ways to describe the South Course. While mostly flat, at 7,765 yards, Torrey Pines is a monster and the longest on Tour. Winds off the coast can also severely hamper a round. Xander Schauffele commented about both of these factors. “It’s brutal. It’s mentally exhausting. The place is a hike. Just everything about it. When the wind picks up, you’re just worn out at the end of the day.”

Over the past five years, it has ranked as the fifth-toughest course on Tour at +1.08 strokes over par per round. Nearly every key metric plays more difficult than average, from scrambling to fairways hit to greens in regulation.

From an agronomy standpoint, greens are Poa annua and fairways and rough are ryegrass overseed. Torrey Pines is infamous for its thick penal four-inch rough. The course typically plays very firm, as Scott Bentley the Deputy Director Golf Division for San Diego remarked, “For the tournament, our goal is to really have dry conditions. We like the fairways to be firm and fast, and we like to see a bounce in the greens. We do expect the rough to be long and lush.”

Winners at Torrey Pines have typically fallen into two classifications – either bombers off the tee or players with elite short-game skills. From the bomber category, we have seen Luke List, Justin Rose, Jon Rahm, Scott Stallings, Tiger Woods, and Bubba Watson triumph. On the short-game side, Patrick Reed, Jason Day, Brandt Snedeker (twice), and Ben Crane. Interestingly, many of the bombers also have quality short games.

This par-72 layout has seven par-4s that play over 450 yards and two par-5s that measure over 615 yards. Golfers must take advantage of the four par-5s as they are generally the only birdie holes on the course, and possibly the only holes that will play under par for the week.

While the coastal setting is spectacular, Torrey Pines lacks compelling hole architecture throughout the South Course. It is often criticized for not standing out architecturally, as many of the par 4s and par 5s feel repetitive in design. The test is very straightforward with no tricks or hidden nuances. What you see is what you get.

Torrey Pines North – Course Features

Playing their lone round on the North Course provides players with a brief respite from the monster that is the South Course. It is a shorter par 72 that measures 7,258 yards on the scorecard and has played significantly easier, averaging -1.52 per round since 2021. That ranks it as the eighth-easiest course on Tour.

That said, the North Course is not without its teeth. It features a three-hole stretch from Nos. 2 through 4 known as “The Undertow,” which ranks among the toughest trios of consecutive holes on Tour. Each hole plays well over par and collectively produces a bogey-or-worse rate of 24.9%.

The North Course features half as many bunkers as the South Course, with just 42 in total. Many of the greens are open in front, allowing players to utilize bump-and-run shots. The Bentgrass putting surfaces run very true, and players routinely comment on how well they roll. Fairways and rough are overseeded with ryegrass.

The greens are average in size and generally slope from back to front with minimal undulation. As with its sister course, players are best served keeping approach shots below the hole. Players will challenged off the tee. Fairways are narrow, averaging only 26 yards wide with the same four-inch rough as on the South Course.

Similar to the South Course, taking advantage of the par-5s is crucial. All four are under 560 yards and have eagle rates that average 3.1%, one of the highest on Tour. The par-3s are the most challenging aspect of the North Course as they average 0.12 strokes over par with a bogey or worse rate of 19.5%. The driveable par-4 7th hole also has a birdie or better rate of 36%. Like its sister track, the North Course won’t win any awards for being aesthetically pleasing. Most of the holes play straight ahead with even the doglegs having only slight angles.

One important note about the North Course is that historically speaking, if a golfer does not post a low round here, they have essentially eliminated themselves from contention. Over the past few years, the winner of this event has shot an average of 5.5 strokes under par in their North Course round.

Strokes Gained Analysis

*With three of the four rounds played on the South Course, we will focus our attention there.

Off the Tee

With its massive length, narrow fairways, and 4″ rough, Torrey Pines presents a true challenge off the tee. Fairways are the fourth-narrowest on Tour at only 27.5 yards wide. Simply put, distance matters here, especially when considering the cooler January air and the thick marine layer combined with less roll from the fairways due to the moisture in the grass. This is evidenced by Driving Distance only averaging 297 yards even though players are pounding drivers on almost every par 4 and par 5. Carry Distance will also have a greater emphasis this week with the soft conditions.

While Driving Accuracy is one of the most difficult on Tour at only 51%, the data shows that hitting fairways is not paramount to success at Torrey Pines. Overall, the penalty for missing the fairway is +0.33 strokes per hole. That ranks in the middle of the pack when analyzing the 80 ShotLink courses used on Tour since 2015. While the rough itself is penal, since the fairways are so narrow and the greens smaller than average, players will be missing both all week.

Since most players will consistently be in the rough, it only makes sense that those who drive the ball farthest will have shorter iron shots and a better chance of holding the green. It is much easier for a “bomber” to hit a higher-lofted iron out of deep rough. With only 1.6% of tee shots going out of bounds and zero water hazards, the bigger hitters have complete freedom to bomb away.

Approach

With the combination of penal rough, small elevated greens, and 33% of approach shots coming from 200+ yards, getting your ball into position to score at Torrey Pines is very difficult. The GIR rate is also below Tour average at 62%. This course produces the most approach shots from over 200 yards on Tour. Successful long-iron and fairway-wood play here is paramount to finishing high on the leaderboard. 

While there are not many hazards to deal with on approach, just about every green complex has a pair of bunkers on either side. Shorter players off the tee who don’t find the fairway will experience an unfortunate trickle-down effect as they are left trying to hack their ball out of the rough followed by scrambling just to make par. Jason Day spoke about how challenging this part of Torrey Pines can be by saying, “If you’re not hitting fairways, the rough is so brutal that where the pins are tucked, you hit it to 30, 40 feet. If you miss a lot of fairways and you’re hitting it to 30, 40 feet, it’s very difficult to hole those putts. So, it’s just about just getting it on the green.”

Around the Green and Putting

The thick rough and tricky greens make short-game and scrambling ability critical for gaining strokes at Torrey Pines. Outside of the 82 bunkers, nearly every around-the-green shot comes from four-inch rough. With so many greens missed, the ability to save par and limit bogeys is extremely valuable. The winners over the past decade are a testament to this and are full of elite scramblers including Harris English, Patrick Reed, Jason Day, and Brandt Snedeker. On average over the past two events, 14 of the top 17 players on the leaderboard have gained strokes around the green.

The South Course at Torrey Pines ranks as the toughest course on Tour in which to make putts inside 15 feet and also inside five feet. There are no “gimme” five-footers here. Greens will run around a 12.5-13 on the stimpmeter which is faster than average, and much quicker than speeds that players have seen in the first few events this year. While these greens lack undulation, the speed will be a huge adjustment for players on these slick Poa surfaces. With the Poa grass being very inconsistent and unpredictable, especially later in the day, certain players struggle mightily, with most citing it as their least favorite putting surface. Some, like Max Homa, grew up on this surface and thrive on it.

Most Important Stats For Success at Torrey Pines

*In order of importance

• Scrambling/SG: ARG (Rough)
• Total Driving
• SG: Approach
• SG: Putting (Poa)
• Bogey Avoidance
• Par 5 Scoring
• Proximity 175+ yds
• SG: Torrey Pines Course History
• Rough Proximity 200+
• SG: Long and Difficult Courses

Unique Rabbit Hole Filters

• Course Region: West
• Course Type: Coastal
• Scoring Conditions: Very Difficult/Difficult
• Course Length: Very Long
• Field Size: Full Field
• Event Season: West Coast
• Greens Surface: Poa
• Rough Length: Long
• Greens Speed: Fast
• OTT Club Type: Driver Heavy
• SG: OTT: Difficult
• Fairway Accuracy: Difficult
• GIR Accuracy: Difficult
• Scrambling (Rough): Difficult
• Gain Putting: Very Difficult

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