There’s nice Torrey Pines and naughty Torrey Pines.
The nice version involves clear skies, hang gliders lazily dotting the horizon and a whisper of wind. It’s a living, breathing postcard hugging the cliffside above the deep blue Pacific Ocean.
The naughty version pours sugar into your gas tank and rats you out to the IRS.
Torrey came out with a back-alley scowl Thursday in the wind-whipped second round of the Farmers Insurance Open that was delayed at one point for 1 hour and 25 minutes.
It was diplomatically rude to all, from the long hitters to short putts.
Flagsticks leaned like willows, straining to hold their ground. A large tree limb fell on the South Course’s 18th hole, barely missing fans. Drives resembled those in disc golf.
There was so much of the blustery stuff that a course employee with a leaf blower zig-zagged between players on the putting green during the delay in a valiant effort to clear debris.
Welcome to Torrey Pines and golf in a blender.
“Just a crazy day, for sure,” said Danny Walker, who survived the flipped script on the normally behaved North Course with a 2-over to stand in third place at 5-under. “One of those days where you can’t even think about what you’re shooting, just got to do your best to hit every shot and just accept whatever happens.
“So much of where the ball’s going to go is just out of your control.”
Gusts pushed past 35 mph on a day that tested club and anger control equally.
A day earlier 86 players finished under par. On Thursday in 2024, 99 did the same. When darkness left 29 players on the course this lap, the number plummeted.
To 13.
First-round leader Ludvig Aberg, who is tied halfway through at 6-under with Lanto Griffin, watched a round of 3-over thin his early lead.
“I don’t remember the last time it was that hard to get close to the pins,” Aberg said.
Wild and wooly as Santa Ana winds uncorked the full arsenal. Asked to gauge it against other experiences in his club-swinging lifetime, Walker could not contain it to the United States.
“The only thing I can compare it to is maybe playing in the Bahamas,” he said.
The day even threw a curveball at the weather guy.
Tour meteorologist Kyle Koval said the conditions pestering players Thursday have only been recorded one or two other times in the last 20 years at the Farmers.
The winds raced in from the east, rather than the normal inland approach off the ocean.
The scorecard-scrambling result: The normally tame North Course, exposed most to the wind at a higher elevation than the technically tougher South Course, showed teeth of its own.
“Easterly winds reaching the ocean is very uncommon,” Koval said. “A lot of times you will see these winds stay about 15 to 20 miles farther east. So it takes a very unique pattern for them to reach the coast.
“To see anything over 20 (mph) coming off the land is very uncommon.”
Also uncommon?
Seeing a player with the chops of Hideki Matsuyama, the 2021 Masters champion with 11 Tour wins, ranked No. 4 in the world, tossed about like a rag doll on the North Course.
On Wednesday, Matsuyama shot 68 on the South to sit at 4-under. On Thursday: 75.
You wondered if the day might scar 19-year-old amateur Jackson Koivun and spur golf nightmares. Koivun shot a 76 on the North, then was asked how the conditions compared to the most difficult he’s faced.
“It’s pretty far up there,” he said.
Well, it didn’t snow. There were no locusts. Beyond that, silver linings seemed as rare as finding penguins in Death Valley.
S.H. Kim, a three-time Tour runner-up, double-bogeyed No. 3 South before bogeying four of the next five holes on the way to an 84. Martin Laird, a four-time Tour winner from wind-savvy Scotland, posted an 81.
Pain did not discriminate.
“The way the wind was blowing,” said Carson Young, after a dizzying 6-over Thursday, “it was almost impossible to hit it close.”
Koval, the weather guy, said Friday will be a return to Wednesday’s civilized conditions.
No penguins, either.