Here's an interesting article from the lead golf writer at San Diego's Union Tribune:
By Tod Leonard
November 24, 2004
The slick, eight-page newsletter from the Lodge at Torrey Pines arrived in the mail at San Diego homes early last week. Featured on the seventh and eighth pages are gorgeous photographs of the Torrey Pines golf courses with the accompanying text:
Beginning early next year, the North Course at Torrey Pines will undergo a renovation that will bring it to the level of excellence required by the PGA Tour.
. . . In the North renovation, greens will be restructured with the average golfer in mind, and bunkers will be strategically placed. Work is expected to begin around February 1, 2005.
Hmmmm. Very interesting. An amazing work of prescience, really, considering the North Course project hadn't even been approved by the City Council's Natural Resources and Culture Committee. That didn't happen until a week ago, and from there it still needs to go to the full City Council for a vote later this month.
Oops.
Except this is much more than oops. This example of either ignorance, arrogance, or both, is the very reason public golfers in San Diego have so little faith in democracy when it comes to the Torrey Pines golf courses.
"It is my understanding this is a hearing to discuss the various issues," Dale Peterson, the immediate past president of the Torrey Pines men's club, told the NR&C committee last Wednesday after showing them the Lodge's newsletter. "This piece here says it's already a done deal."
Of course it was a done deal, because the Lodge, the Century Club, the pro shop and the men's club at Torrey Pines had signed off on it long before the meeting. As with the renovation of the South Course, a carefully orchestrated campaign had been mounted to educate the small, influential groups that needed to be swayed, and when that was successful, the NR&C's approval was a mere formality.
The Lodge knew that, and no doubt produced its full-color brochure without a qualm or a clue.
Herewith lies the dilemma at Torrey Pines. It is becoming increasingly difficult to discern who's running the show.
There are at least 14 constituencies that have a stake in the two courses: local golfers, tourists, City Council, Park and Recreation Department, pro shop, Lodge, Hilton, Century Club, men's club, women's club, PGA Tour, San Diego Junior Golf Association, USGA and the local 2008 U.S. Open committee.
Forgive us if we've overlooked a nudist society on Black's Beach.
The point is: If Torrey were paper, it'd be in shreds because so many special interests are pawing at the supposedly municipal facility.
City Councilman Michael Zucchet may be one of the few people at City Hall who truly gets it when it comes to the passion everyday golfers feel for Torrey Pines. It is Zucchet, a Torrey Pines men's club member and 6-handicap who learned to play on the course, who was instrumental in getting the North's radical overhaul reduced – he hopes – to a "maintenance" project to replace the aging greens, along with bunkers and tees.
"That question (of special interests) is part of all of these discussions," Zucchet said. "It's first and present with these North plans. I asked 10 times, who's asking for this? Is the PGA Tour threatening to pull the (Buick Invitational)? No. The USGA? No. Are the (public) players asking for it? No. I was told, 'Because we think it's a good thing to do.'
"I think it was because (course architect) Rees Jones thought it would be a good idea, and the people at the Century Club did. Nobody else was asking for it."
Zucchet's problem is that he's not a greenskeeper, so he can't argue when the grass experts tell him the greens aren't draining well and need to be replaced.
Those who golf at Torrey North only know that the well-maintained greens have rolled fast and fair. For three years, they have been vastly better than the South's greens after the renovation's sodding problem.
It's likely the public golfer would go happily along playing the North for years on these greens. Instead – and no matter how closely city officials stand over Jones' shoulder – the North will never be the same.
"If they do too much with it, the course won't offer the same type of play it does now," said Noah Manning of Pacific Beach, after playing the back nine on the North yesterday. "I wouldn't mind some minor adjustments, but nothing major.
"Only God can give you a gift like this course. People like coming over here and playing it because it's fun. The USGA will come here (for the U.S. Open) in 2008, but then they're gone after that. They already made huge changes on the South, and if they make huge changes on the North, the people who play it will be left with the changes and have to deal with them."
San Diegan John Oden, 80, who's been playing Torrey for 20 years, had similar thoughts.
"If I were recommending, I'd recommend doing nothing," he said. "The next-best thing is to redo the greens only. I understand the greens are old and will go bad if they're not replaced. They say the drainage isn't very good. So if that's the case, get new greens. But the bunkers are fine where they are."
Anybody who thinks the North's greens are going to the barber shop for a trim off the top is badly mistaken. It's a frontal lobotomy. Just watch. When they're done, the greens and the bunkers around them will more resemble the South's than anyone now imagines. Isn't that the very point made by the Lodge's brochure: "The renovation . . . will bring it to the level of excellence required by the PGA Tour."
When the renovation is done, and the North's 18th hole has been pushed 40 yards north to open up space, the lobbying for a new clubhouse will begin, with a projected finish in the winter of 2007. Conveniently, that's well before the city's Big Players will show it off at the 2008 U.S. Open. Again, there are special-interest fingerprints all over that one.
Zucchet, the public golfer, is genuinely, deeply concerned.
"When some interests don't mesh with those of the daily player, I think the entities most listened to are the USGA or the Century Club or some other very well-intentioned entities," Zucchet said. "There needs to be an attempt to shift back to the attitude that this is a municipal golf course at the end of the day. I want to make sure that's the case."
In the meantime, golfers, remember this: Unlike the South, you are paying for the North's $2.5 million to $3 million renovation with your green fees. Barring private funding, you will be paying untold millions for the clubhouse, and probably a driving range.
So in 2009, when the freeze on greens fees is lifted a year after the U.S. Open, you need to scream at the top of your lungs if the city tries to raise your greens fees after spending its considerable surplus on North Course "maintenance" and a new clubhouse you didn't ask for.
At the very least, get a crystal ball and start your own newsletter. It really works.
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Tod Leonard: (619) 293-1858; tod.leonard@uniontrib.com
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