PGA Tour players carp about Torrey Pines North

Geoff Shackelford on Golfobserver.com writes a great piece on the raging battle over Torrey Pines, the golf courses run by the city of San Diego. In the story he quotes Tom Pernice on the reno of the South Course.

"It was an old traditional seaside course," said Pernice, an admirer of classic course design and San Diego resident. "Now it looks like it was built in 2003, and it's a typical piece-of-junk Rees Jones design. He ruined the greens. The greens are done pitifully, pure and simple. Bad design."

Doesn't sound like much of an endorsement, does it? All Rees did was take a course and make it longer and less interesting. Apparently that's what it takes to host a U.S. Open. Quite a shame.

For more on how the USGA pushes to get exactly what it wants, read Open: Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black by John Feinstein. Though Feinstein is a little too cozy with the USGA, the book (whether Feinstein wants to or not) shows just how the USGA does everything it can to get what it wants out of a golf course.