[PHOTO: Ben Jared]

Charley Hoffman called it a “loaded question.” Jason Day attempted to be forthright while dancing gingerly with his words. “I’m trying to tread lightly,” he said, “because I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”

The subject that had them bobbing and weaving? The current state and stature of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, and whether its appeal to players and fans has taken a hit in the post-Tiger Woods era that has seen significant changes in the pro golf landscape. Among them, of course, include the torn allegiances created by LIV Golf, a schedule conundrum around the big-money signature events and possibly even competition for players’ time from the new simulator golf league, TGL, led by Woods and Rory McIlroy.

Throw in the steady slide of linear TV ratings, a few lesser-known winners in recent years, and four years of the oddity of a Wednesday-to-Saturday schedule shifted to avoid a head-to-head match-up against the NFL playoffs, and it would seem the tournament has lost some of its mojo at a critical time, with the Farmers sponsorship deal expiring after the 2026 tournament.

As Torrey Pines devotees – Day has won twice in 15 appearances and Hoffman, a San Diegan, made his 27th start this week – they want to be honest in acknowledging the challenges without laying much blame on the place and event that have meant so much to them and their families. Think of the unwritten rule where you can pick on your little brother, but others better not dare.

“I’ve had a lot of good memories here, so that’s why I’m very loyal to this place,” Day said. “I don’t want it to get to a point where we’ve just kind of forgotten about it, because to me, personally, I think of like the wins that Tiger won, like even myself and what that felt like.”

An iteration of the original San Diego Open has been played in the region since 1952 and at Torrey Pines’ two seaside municipal layouts since 1969. The tournament has enjoyed more bountiful years than lean, and few events on the PGA Tour had it better at the turn of the millennium, when Woods played 11 consecutive years and won five times in a six-year span.

But Woods, because of his various surgeries and the horrible car accident, hasn’t competed at Torrey Pines since 2020 and last won on his beloved track a dozen years ago. The entire PGA Tour has strongly felt Woods’ absence, but there are fans at some tournaments who don’t know what they’re missing because Tiger rarely strayed from his favourite venues. For Torrey, Woods’ disappearance produced a lingering hangover that may still need tending.

160247941
Tiger Woods celebrates on the 18th green after winning the 2013 Farmers Insurance Open. [Photo: Stan Badz]
“We took it for granted, there’s not a question in my mind,” said Hoffman, 48, who played in his first Torrey Pines event as a 17-year-old amateur qualifier in 1994, four years before Woods’ debut in the then-Buick Invitational. “As someone who’s played here for over 30 years, you took it for granted that Tiger Woods was going to show up here and the city of San Diego was going to have the best player in the world each and every year. We’re in reality now with what every other city has to deal with without Tiger Woods.”

Keegan Bradley, the current US Ryder Cup captain, put Torrey Pines on his schedule in his rookie season of 2011 and has missed only one year since. It was a must-play at Tiger’s place. “As a rookie, I remember being on the putting green and hearing this big commotion,” he recalled this week at the Farmers. “I look up and there’s Tiger, and this big crowd around him. That was the first time I truly felt like I was on the PGA Tour. And I always felt like that here. To me, there was no tournament that felt more like the tour than this one.

“I would hope that this doesn’t get lost in everything else that’s going on.”

The Farmers Insurance Open seems like a prime example for one of the largest issues facing the tour now: How do “regular” tour events thrive amid the signature tournaments that debuted in 2023 as a counter to the signing bonuses and big purses being offered from rival LIV Golf? The top players wanted a bigger chunk of the pot, and the PGA Tour backed up the Brink’s truck. There are eight tournaments with $US20 million minimum purses and limited fields, and three of those come in the first seven weeks of the season.

So, if you’re a top-tier player and you don’t want to play more than three weeks in a row – a common refrain now – where do you take time off? The Farmers falls three weeks behind the season-opening Sentry, but is immediately in front of signature event No.2, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Then comes the WM Phoenix Open, followed by signature No.3, the Woods-hosted Genesis Invitational.

“Well, there are two tours within a tour now,” Day said. “I think you have the top guys playing the signature events and you have the other side of it, too. I think that just happened purely because of the way when LIV came about, and it’s unfortunate, but ultimately that’s what we’re dealing with now.

“…The only way you’re going to get the best players in the world is shrink the schedule down dramatically,” Day continued, “and I think essentially that’s kind of what they’re doing now within the tour.”

913854854
Jason Day looks over a putt during the 2018 Farmers Insurance Open. [Photo: Sean M. Haffey]
The issue for the Farmers of late is attracting enough high-profile players to make the tournament appealing to TV or streaming viewers. Of the most notable players during the past decade, many have regularly skipped Torrey, including Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau. The latter three aren’t currently eligible to play because they’re on LIV, and even ardent Torrey fan Jon Rahm, with a Farmers and US Open win in San Diego, can’t compete because he’s on the Saudi-backed circuit. Jordan Spieth has played the Farmers seven times but never had good results and was last here in 2022. The most painful current miss is Rory McIlroy, who might figure to covet Torrey with two top-five finishes in three Farmers starts but he hasn’t been back since 2021 because the Ulsterman regularly faces a conflict with playing in the DP World Tour’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic.

Does the absence of stars truly hamper regular tour events? In 2023, after lightly regarded journeyman Luke List won the Farmers and the Saturday final-round Nielsen rating was 1.7 (2.6 million viewers in America), tournament executive director Marty Gorsich said, “We are a social and lifestyle event, whether you love golf or not. We have the views, the food, the drinks, the energy. We have plenty to hold the interest of the golf junkie, but plenty to offer for non-golf people, too.”

Gorsich has reported strong corporate sales while skyboxes have been expanded considerably in the past few years, a trend that can offset some of the losses of having only one weekend round for which to sell tickets. Yet if it’s going well on the ground, gauging interest across the US has been more nebulous.

Golf fans love their front-runners, and the past five Farmers winners have not exactly stirred a lot of emotion. Marc Leishman prevailed on Sunday in 2020, when fans were distracted by news of the tragic death of Kobe Bryant, followed by Patrick Reed’s runaway win amid a rules kerfuffle in 2021. List was next, then Max Homa in 2023, and last year, France’s Matthieu Pavon, unknown to most in the US, captured the prized surfboard in only his third tour start. Only Homa, popular because of his personality and social-media presence, is any kind of a needle-mover for Americans.

1460363840
Max Homa reacts to a putt on Sunday of his win at Torrey Pines in 2023. [Photo: Sean M. Haffey]
Not surprisingly, linear TV ratings have dipped by a lot for the Farmers, though it’s a trend being felt all around in golf. Last year’s CBS Farmers ratings for the final round on Saturday dropped to 0.98, or 1.22 million viewers. That’s a stunning contrast to the numbers in Woods’ prime, when his 2008 Buick Invitational victory drew a 4.2 rating and 6.2 million viewers.

Part of the problem could be that fans are still thinking there will be a final round on Sunday. This week, when Day was asked if the Wednesday start and Saturday finish were problematic for some players and their schedules, he replied by asking why they couldn’t play on Sunday. Told that the tour didn’t want to go up against the NFL’s conference championship games, Day admitted, “Competing against the NFL, that’s obviously difficult.” (Maybe there’s hope for Torrey on that front. A tentative NFL schedule for 2027 has the conference championship games being played a week later, with the Super Bowl scheduled for Valentine’s Day.)

Hoffman, Day and Bradley all said they believe the tour’s schedule should be re-examined in the near future to assess if long-standing tournaments such as the Farmers need to be moved. And with new investment in PGA Tour Enterprises from SSG and a tour deal seemingly still in the offing with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, just about anything seems possible.

Hoffman, for one, would like to see the entire West Coast Swing re-imagined.

“If I had a crystal ball, I may juggle up the whole schedule, not even play a West Coast Swing,” he said. “Maybe play Florida first and maybe play the West Coast more in the summer when we all want to be in San Diego.” Of course, summer wouldn’t work in the California desert or Scottsdale, but that’s the point of Hoffman’s exercise: “Just jumble it all up.”

One area in which both the Farmers organisers and PGA Tour officials don’t seem to be backing down on is how the two courses are set up each year. With deep rough, narrow fairways and bouncy greens when its dry, Torrey South is the test that made it worthy of hosting two US Opens, and the “easier” North course’s scoring average is only a couple shots lower (during yesterday’s first round, the South course had a 72.49 average while the North was 70.22). Some players relish a difficult test so early in the season; others probably want nothing to do with it.

“Some people love the challenge, and it may make those tournaments feel easier to them if they come out here and play well at Torrey Pines,” Hoffman said. “…It is how are you going to peak and be ready for those big, big tournaments now? It’s just a different way to look at it with the signature events, for sure.”

Of course, Hoffman had to cite the example of the king of Torrey one more time. “Tiger,” he said, “would always rise up to the challenge.”