Brawny Torrey Pines South even longer in cold rain

SAN DIEGO – Rory McIlroy is one-for-one on the PGA TOUR in 2025, making a hole-in-one in Round 1 and shooting what he called “a really good poor-weather performance” in Round 3 on the way to his AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am win.

That was two weeks ago. McIlroy hopes to make it two-for-two at The Genesis Invitational at the Torrey Pines South Course, the fill-in for The Riviera Country Club after fires tore through Los Angeles, displacing an estimated 50,000 people and doing $275 billion worth of damage.

“It's good to be back,” said McIlroy, whose last look at Torrey Pines South came at the 2021 U.S. Open, where he tied for seventh. “…It's a little bit of a different setup to the U.S. Open in ’21. It's a lot softer, and rough is thick and course is playing very long."

Rain fell Wednesday and is predicted to continue Thursday and Friday, which might be more good news for McIlroy, whose primacy with the driver has the potential to separate him from the pack at the soft, 7,765-yard South Course. He was No. 1 in Driving Distance and in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee at the AT&T. In other words, his usual self.

These are good things, for he still has some catching up to do in California.

Although McIlroy has 27 PGA TOUR victories, until he won the AT&T two weeks ago only one of those came in California: the 2015 World Golf Championships-Cadillac Match Play at San Francisco’s TPC Harding Park. He has played in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines just three times. He finished T5 in 2019, T3 in ’20 and T16 in ’21.

Fast-forward to today, and he’s been refamiliarizing himself with the course.

“The rough is very, very penal,” he said, “so there's a premium of putting your ball in the fairway and controlling the spin into the greens. Not that I didn't remember, but it took me by surprise when I played a few holes (Monday) just how much pitch and slope there is on these greens.

“If you are lucky enough to be hitting the ball out of the fairway,” he added, “you're going to have to control your spin on these greens a lot as well, so a lot of like three-quarter shots.”

One of McIlroy’s objectives at the AT&T was to limit mistakes, a skill he noticed Scottie Scheffler seems to have mastered in his ascent to world No. 1. Although it was just one week, McIlroy achieved that objective at Pebble Beach, where he aimed at the pins with his wedges (witness his ace at Spyglass Hill in Round 1) but at other times curbed his aggressive instinct.

So far, so good. He shot a final-round 66 to win by two over his friend and Zurich Classic of New Orleans partner Shane Lowry. The victory came at what McIlroy called one of the “cathedrals of golf” in Pebble Beach, a designation he said fits only a select few courses like St. Andrews and Augusta National. “Maybe a few more you could add in there,” he said.

Tiger Woods’ seven Farmers Insurance Open victories, plus his 2008 U.S. Open triumph here, elevated the prestige of Torrey Pines, a visually stunning course. And it’s not like McIlroy hasn’t come close to winning here. Perhaps the venue change, plus copious rain and a premium on good driving, are harbingers of a third California victory for the world No. 3 McIlroy.

“Feel like I'm in good form obviously coming off the back of Pebble,” he said. “Just trying to keep it rolling.”