No, I’m not talking about weird agriculturists. The topic here is the 2021 Farmers Insurance Open held at Torrey Pines in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Players, caddies, marshals, TV, but no fans. Really quiet surroundings. A different, somewhat freaky, experience.
For the record, the winner of the tournament was Patrick Reed. He tied for the lead after the first round, fell one stroke behind to second on Friday, was tied for the lead after three, and forged ahead on Sunday to a five-stroke win, 14 under par.
As a marshal/hole captain, I spent my days on one hole and that narrow focus pretty much excludes having a good sense of the flow of the tournament, who’s moving up and down, etc. This was especially true this year due to the absence of scoreboard bearers accompanying each group.
Besides all the changes to the tournament as a result of the pandemic, the biggest change for me personally was a change in the hole to which I was assigned. A few months before the tournament began, I was offered the opportunity to move from the par-5, 615-yard, 9th hole on the South Course to the par-3 3rd hole on South. There was somewhat of the sense of going out to pasture, moving from managing 16-30 marshals to overseeing 2-3 and dealing with a hole with far fewer complexities. But I was ready for that and 3 South is iconic at Torrey Pines.
Reportedly the most-photographed hole on the course (it’s the cover photo on the official course map), the hole features an elevated tee and a green on the edge of a bluff over the Pacific. From the tee, where the elevation adds to the view, one sees the community of La Jolla on the horizon to the southwest. The hole was featured continually on the Golf Channel and CBS telecasts, with drones and the Goodyear blimp offering dramatic aerial views. This is a drone-eye view, copied from the telecast (if a small image appears, click on it).
Here’s a gallery of overheard views. (Click on the image and you can advance through larger images.)
My getup was a double mask. I wore a KF94, the Korean version of the N95, underneath a silicone mask that contained a filter of similar efficacy. I had not worn masks for such an extended period (5-7 hours each day for 5 days) as during the tournament. They were not uncomfortable. I could breathe easily, even climbing up rather steep terrain. Breathing into them that long, however, sometimes created quite a bit of humidity and the atmosphere in there turned a bit “funky.” I became certainly more empathetic about health care and other essential workers who must wear masks for extended periods, day after day.
We were also checked out before entering the course. We had to pass through temperature and security screenings. On Thursday, they had switched to a scanner used at airports, which didn’t require someone putting a sensor up to your forehead. It went off, however, when I passed by. The young woman monitoring the device took an individual reading of my temperature with a handheld sensor, and I was fine. She said I might have had “cap warmth.” I had worn my cap in from the car, only taking it off as I passed the scanner. From then on, I removed my cap on the walk from my car to the screening tent and never had another problem.
The first day of a tournament is the pro-am on Wednesday, when non-professionals pay tons to play a round with a pro. No TV, very few fans outside of family and friends and usually a really long day for marshals and other volunteers. With two waves of participants teeing off on holes 1 and 10 in the morning and afternoon, it has always been a dawn-to-dusk assignment. Until this year. For me, with a 45-minute drive to Torrey Pines (without traffic), it was still a 3:30 am wakeup and a pre-dawn drive. First tee-off was 6:40 am, essentially dawn. But the pandemic brought participation way down and there was only one wave, and that smaller than usual. The last group went by hole #3 shortly after noon and we were out of there by 1:30.
The first round of the tournament, on Thursday, featured a distinctive special moment. When I had posted on Facebook about my first day at the course, a high school classmate messaged me, asking me to convey regards to Richy Werenski, a young golfer from South Hadley, near where we had grown up in Springfield, in Western Massachusetts. I saw that Werenski was in the fifth group. When he entered the tee box, I said, “Go Western Mass.!” He glanced over at me, seemingly surprised, smiled, and said “Yeah. Thanks.”
Other friends had said earlier they hoped that, being on a par-3 hole, I might have the chance to see a hole-in-one. Done. Richy Werenski, buoyed, I think, by my “hometown encouragement,” hit a hole-in-one. I didn’t see it occur. I heard people around the green clap and cheer. Werenski didn’t see it either. He looked around and asked, “Did it go in?” It did.
Thing is, it was early in the first round and Werenski was with a like group of golf non-superstars. There was no TV and no video to share on social media. Thus, it was recorded officially as a hole-in-one, but, in many respects, it never happened, except for the several people who literally saw it. The next morning, I reported to the marshals’ office to pick up my radio and stuff and told the above anecdote. No one there had heard about a hole-in-one. There was also no mention in media coverage of the day, at least that I saw. (After shooting 6 under par for the first two rounds, Werenski was 8 over par on the final two rounds, finishing 2 over and tied for 60th.)
There were forecasts for Friday that predicted steady rain of 1-2 inches in La Jolla throughout the day. That’s a lot for this area. I had prepared, purchasing rain pants and waterproof socks to go with my waterproof hiking boots and waterproof shell. My outfit, seen at right, ended up being effective, though it was not needed as extensively as expected.
When I left Fallbrook that morning, it was raining. When I got to Torrey Pines, the sky was clear and sunny. It had rained hard overnight, but the morning on Friday was pleasant. Skies to the east and north contained lots of clouds and the expectation was that inclement weather would happen there.
Late morning, however, skies to the west started to look threatening. Forecasts online called for rain and wind to come around midday. The forecasts were accurate. I’ve learned that rain around here often comes in cells and/or bands. Brief intense rain and wind, a bit of a respite, then another intense band, and so on. That was generally what happened on Friday. At one point, I heard the 15 South hole captain on the radio reporting hail. Here is a gallery of weather-related images from Friday. (Click on the image and you can advance through larger images.)
Saturday was crisp and sunny, but Sunday was warm enough that, for the first time during the tournament, I removed my jacket. Still with a cold weather layer underneath, I should emphasize. At one point on the tee, I saw a cameraman come up to the tee and put himself directly opposite from me, with the golfers teeing off between us. Hmmm, I thought, I could end up on TV. Done. Here’s the screenshot from Golf Channel, with golfer Sam Burns also in the picture. The camera was there for all three golfers, but this was the only view of me that made the telecast.
It’s probably the best screen capture of me at Torrey on TV that I’ve seen, except, of course, for the mask thing. On the other hand, the one at left is pretty good, too. Certainly, the “other person” in the shot is even more notable than Sam Burns. This was in 2014 and Tiger was picking up his ball on 9 North at the conclusion of his round. He failed to make the cut that year and skipped the Farmers for a few years. It was my first year as a marshal at the tournament.
When your horizon for almost 180 degrees is at sea level, indeed is the sea, skies become quite big. I enjoyed watching the changing skies during the day and as the days changed. Here is a gallery of such views. (Click on the image and you can advance through larger images.)
The absence of ambient sound greatly heightened the perception of singular sound. Caddies hushed marshals 50+ yards away who were chatting. Not talking loudly, just chatting. Twice, I was called out from 20+ yards away for folding a piece of paper and then handling, not opening, a bag of potato chips. It made one a little paranoid that some caddy or player somewhere in the radius of activity that constituted the cone of silence would single you out for what normally would have been lost in the ambience.
Torrey Pines is to host the US Open in June. I have applied to be a volunteer and have been accepted, though I don’t know what particular role I will fill. I hope conditions at the time will permit at least some fans. People are watching on TV, of course, but the absence of fans on the golf course made it seem as if you were on the sound stage of a television production, not at a golf tournament.
Another unusual experience in these most unusual 11 months.