No matter how many times you see it in print or watch it on TV or hear it said, it's just amazing.
The U.S. Open is going to be played at Torrey Pines South.
The Open.
By this time next week, the drama on the greensward will have played out to the final putt.
Around the world, millions of players with loops in their swings will swear they'll play Torrey before they're placed on life support and their Callaways and FootJoys hawked in a fire sale.
No matter how many sweetening deals were cut to make it happen, it's a marvel that these four days of global grace have been awarded to Torrey, the local player's best nightmare.
The same grassy ground that generations of junior golfers cut their teeth on will test the skill – and endurance and sanity – of the world's elite players.
This isn't your father's Buick, mind you.
This is the Open, the Hummer of all tournaments.
Whenever the subject of the 2008 Open comes up, I always point out a lottery-level game of chance: The two best golfers in the world – Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson – were practically weaned on Torrey, the stomping ground of greatness.
When I was growing up on the county's public courses, no available test measured up to Torrey. It was San Diego's proletarian Pebble Beach, the terrifying beast interlaced by barrancas, haunted by rattlesnakes and stiffened by wind and slick greens that subtly broke toward the water as if the ocean were a siren seducing dying Titleists as they neared the cup.
Against the wind, uphill No. 12 was the toughest par 4 in the county, bar none. Hit her in two and you hitched up your pants like Arnold Palmer.
Now that Torrey has undergone its extreme Open makeover and has emerged as a pampered rock star with spiked rough, let's take a moment to remember its roots.
You can't appreciate Torrey – and what it means to San Diego – unless you also understand Presidio.
In a special sense known deep down by local kids who grew up in the great game, Presidio and Torrey are the same course.
I go back 50 years.
On the first tee in front of the tiny pro shop, a starter (legendary pro Al Abrego?) calls my name. I walk to the first tee under the gaze of a small crowd of 10-and-under players, scorekeepers and parents. I tee up a new ball and take a few practice swings and stare at the green maybe 30 yards away.
Phil and Tiger, who grew up in Orange County, and most every other serious regional player went through that same rite of passage at Presidio, the region's incubator of golf.
I'd bet you dinner at The Lodge at Torrey Pines – and I can't afford to lose – that Phil or Tiger could describe every hole at Presidio, how to cut down the risk of each pitch onto the tiny hard greens. (The trick? Always be short. Long, and you're dead.)
From Presidio, the progression was to the nine-hole course at “Muni,” the Balboa Golf Course. This was where big tournaments were played for 11-and 12-year-olds. As the players grew in size, so did the holes and the quality of the greens.
And then, at 13, players moved across the street to the “big course,” the old hilly layout that allowed the top junior players to break par occasionally.
In the late summer of 1963, I won the city championship at Muni, beating future pro John Schroeder in a sudden-death playoff. If memory serves, we finished three under after four rounds, both holing birdie putts on the 18th, the notorious Cardiac Hill.
The public course was generous to those with solid short games, but No. 6 was the best long par 3 in the county in those days. (Don't leave it to the right, or you're dead.)
But Torrey South, the venue in the 1960s for the county junior match-play championship, was the Green Monster. A skinny kid in Bermudas had to play his best to stay in sight of par.
And when the wind was blowing, it could bring him to his bare knees.
I don't play golf anymore. Haven't for years. In a sense, I love the game too much to play it as a harried adult.
As a kid, golf gave me solitude on long evenings when I would play alone with three balls – one for Nicklaus, one for Palmer, and one for Player. The game taught me, through caddying and playing almost every day, how to get along with adults even when they couldn't get up and down in two if their lives depended on it.
And to this day, I remember every hole at Presidio, Muni and Torrey. I sometimes play them in fleeting dreams.
This week, as I watch Phil and Tiger on South, stretched to superhuman scale, these giants of the game might seem far beyond the first tee at little Presidio.
But not to me.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
