Farmers Insurance Open team helps prep Torrey Pines after LA fires

SAN DIEGO – Having a game that can travel is one thing.

Migrating an entire tournament 107 miles south is another matter.

Such was the case for The Genesis Invitational, which was moved from The Riviera Country Club to Torrey Pines' South Course after fires swept through Los Angeles, displacing an estimated 50,000 people and doing some $275-billion worth of damage.

“Our larger team had to understand, 'OK, this is going to be a different year,'” said TGR Live Senior Director of Operations Brandon Wong, who lives in Los Angeles but whose home was not affected by the fires. “We have two and a half weeks to figure this out.”

Two different cities with two different vibes, Los Angeles and San Diego are normally sports rivals. That rivalry has been put aside, though, amid Southern California’s worst-ever inferno. Fire crews from San Diego rushed into harm’s way to fight the blaze, and the Farmers Insurance Open, the annual PGA TOUR stop at Torrey Pines, has donated invaluable resources and know-how to help The Genesis Invitational settle into its temporary home.

“We had to talk to 60 to 70 groups and say, ‘Does this work? Can you extend your stay? Can you make these changes? Can you do this all again?’” said The Century Club of San Diego Director of Operations Nick Schling. “To reset this place for (The Genesis Invitational) was a massive undertaking.”

It’s a tight-knit group of people who put on some of the most visible golf tournaments in the world, and Wong and Schling, having worked just two and a half hours from each other on Interstate 5, have known each other for years. When told that they come across as close as brothers, they crack up laughing, for Schling is from Ohio, Wong from California.

“We just speak the same language,” Wong said.

Whatever the case, their close rapport has filtered down to their teams, helping turn what could have been a mad scramble into a mostly seamless transition.

It also helped that the two tournaments share a handful of operational partners, among them Shaffer Sports & Events, which does the build-out for hospitality and corporate partners. While much of the build-out this week will look familiar from the tournament here last month, the mesh that was Farmers blue three weeks ago is now Genesis black, with the insignia to match.

Also, there are brand new Genesis cars perched in various places throughout the South Course.

The Farmers’ food-and-beverage partner, Behind the Scenes Catering, does events worldwide, but in this case, they’ve merely had to hold their position, for they’re doing The Genesis, too.

“That was the second or third one we had to call and say, ‘Hey, can you come back?’” Schling said. “Pulling all the health department permits alone – we typically pull those permits six months in advance, so to do it with a two-week turnaround, it was tremendous partnership with the City of San Diego to get that done in time.”

Although there was no shortage of speculation concerning alternate Genesis tournament sites, Wong always suspected this Signature Event would wind up moving south. When it was made official Jan. 24, the third round of the Farmers Insurance Open, he was already at Torrey Pines.

“The week of the Farmers, they ran that event but also shepherded me around as well in figuring out how we were going to get this done,” Wong said. “It was very collaborative in trying to figure out, OK, what are the key points that will make this look like The Genesis Invitational?”

Fans at home will still see Torrey Pines South, the course that hosts not only the Farmers but also, on occasion, the U.S. Open. But there will be subtle changes.

Due to anticipated wet weather, the rough will be down a quarter of an inch from what it was at the Farmers. Pin placements will be different, with the Farmers’ traditional front-left pin on 18 on Sunday likely to be replaced by the front-right placement made famous by Woods’ holed putt to force a playoff with Rocco Mediate at the 2008 U.S. Open.

The teeing areas will also be different.

“The beauty of Torrey Pines South is the four par 3s have a great variety of tee settings,” said Steve Rintoul, VP of rules and officiating, PGA TOUR.

The same goes for the par 5s, he said, the multiple teeing and pinning options giving the course setup team the latitude to make them unreachable in two shots or, conversely, very accessible.

“Our plan is for it to look and feel different from the Farmers,” Rintoul said. “The field size, when you go from 156 players to 72 of the world’s best, changes the dynamic, too. Players are saying the course is immaculate, that it doesn’t even look like it just hosted a tournament.”

Wong and Schling continue to work out of an Army-green shed just off the ninth tee to bring off this rare double: two PGA TOUR events on the same course in a span of four weeks. Although Muirfield Village hosted back-to-back tournaments in 2020, that was a planned "two-fer." This one was not. Be that as it may, it’s gone better than anyone could have expected.

Sure, Wong said he misses his wife and 2-year-old daughter back in Los Angeles, but it hasn’t been all bad. He and the rest of The Genesis operations team are staying in a spiffy rental house in nearby Del Mar – a house that Schling and the Farmers team found for them.

“Any other site we would have gone to would not have been as streamlined as it’s been with the Farmers team, specifically Nick and his guys,” Wong said. “Having the relationship with Nick and the support of The Century Club made this as good of a situation as it could have been.”