Four months into his renovation of the Torrey Pines North Course, Tom Weiskopf is already getting a bit sentimental.

Driving around the La Jolla site in a cart last week, on a rare sunny morning in June, Weiskopf reflected on the work being done and said wistfully, “It’s been a really beautiful experience for me. I’m not looking forward to when it’s over, because I’ve really enjoyed it.”

Weiskopf, 73, has poured himself into this project as much as any of his more than 60 others. He and his wife, Laurie, temporarily moved to San Diego after the first of the year, and the 16-time PGA Tour winner and British Open champion has been immersed daily in the construction ever since.

In his down time, Weiskopf has found time to play golf at numerous country clubs in the area with his old friend from his pro tour days, John Schroeder, and Weiskopf even hooked up for 18 holes with Phil Mickelson, who got the North project rolling with his original bid before being deemed ineligible to finish it due to state regulations.


It could have been awkward, but Weiskopf said Torrey Pines wasn’t broached.

“I wasn’t going to bring it up,” Weiskopf said. “I figured if he had a problem, he would have brought it up, knowing him. But he didn’t.”

Weiskopf was happy last week to provide a tour of the property to show the progress and share thoughts on his philosophy as the project moves forward. After a three-week delay due to finalizing plans with the Coastal Commission, the construction phase began in late February and is scheduled to end sometime in July, followed by the grow-in period.

Regular golfers nervous that Weiskopf might try to make the new North something like the tough South Course can relax. Thus far, he seems to have taken extra consideration for the average duffer.


“The most important thing is playability,” Weiskopf said. “How can the average guy play the hole better than in the past?

“The whole reason for doing this is to improve the experience of those 80,000 rounds of public play. That’s the question: How do you make it challenging, fair, interesting, pretty? All of those things add into what we’re trying to do.”

Among the themes emerging from the work:

The greens will be significantly larger and flatter.


One of the most effective arguments to redo the course was that the greens were so heavily sloped from back to front that they were difficult to putt at higher speeds, while affording few manageable pin placements.

On average, the new greens will be about 30 percent larger than the old, and their slopes will be no more than about 1.5 percent. There were some that had a 4-percent grade.

The difficult par-3 sixth green – miniature golf-like because of its pitch – is a good example, having been enlarged to 6,200 square feet from 4,500 while the slope is greatly reduced.

There will be hog backs and ridges to divide portions of the greens, but nothing overly severe.


Of the receptiveness of the greens, Weiskopf is fond of saying, “It’s like Allstate; you’re in good hands.”

One big change from the last public presentation, Weiskopf said, is the greens will have a sub-air system (like Augusta National) to control the moisture in them. That was added, he said, with money saved from leaving some sections of current cart path instead of rebuilding them.

There are fewer bunkers than on the original North Course, and even fewer than Weiskopf planned. He has settled on either 42 or 43, down from his first drawing of 50 and from the preexisting total of 60.

“The ones that are there are very strategic,” Weiskopf said. “You don’t need any more than that when you’re trying to get 80,000 rounds on here. We overdo bunkers anyway.”


The average player will have to be a bomber to reach any of the fairway bunkers because they’re positioned for the pros. The greenside bunkers are mostly placed on one side, leaving the golfer the ability to make a less penalizing miss on the other side. At most, only one-third of any green is protected in the front by a bunker and that doesn’t occur very often. There is plenty of space to hit run-up shots.

One key element for Weiskopf was providing about 6 yards of tightly mowed grass around the greens to allow golfers to try a variety of short shots to recover.

The bunkers will be state-of-the-art. Above the drainage pipes is Capillary Concrete, a trademarked, porous surface that maintains the shape of the bunker while ensuring good drainage.

There are significant changes to the old sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth holes – which will become the closing stretch in the flipping of the nines.


Beyond the alterations to the sixth green, Weiskopf admirably was able to eliminate the cart path and turn circle to the right of the hole, removing the chance of an unlucky cart-path bounce. A bunker has been added to the right side of the green.

At the uphill, dogleg right seventh, Weiskopf had issues with the final 30 yards being so severely uphill that it made it difficult for average players to reach the green. He has lowered the green, close to its original position, by a large amount — 8 feet — making it more receptive. Mounding to the right and back of the green will kick balls closer to the putting surface.

“It’s a hard hole, and I know we made it better,” Weiskopf said.

The dirt removed at the seventh was used to triple the size of the teeing areas at the downhill sixth.


The eighth and ninth are the only changes in par, with the former becoming a dogleg par-5 that hugs the canyon on the left. The large green is perched well behind the previous back tee for the ninth.

“It’s a brand-new hole,” Weiskopf said. “It’s only 530 (yards from the back) and always plays downwind. It’ll be fun; you just don’t want to go left.”

The late holes on the original back nine, other than No. 17, weren’t accessible on the day we toured due to heavy construction, but Weiskopf said the goal is to “hide” as much as possible the unattractive views of the maintenance yard, driving range and parking lot to the left of 16, 17, and 18.

By all appearances, Weiskopf is going out of his way to put the public golfer first.


“It’s important to me because I grew up in public golf, on a par-3 course in Ohio,” he said. “My parents played public golf. To have this opportunity at Torrey Pines is monumental for me.

“If I was a kid, I’d make it a point to get out here and work on my game. You can’t learn golf any better than on these two courses. And now you’re going to have a brand new golf course to play.”

tod.leonard@sduniontribune.com