No one can be sure who's going to win the 108th U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, but there's already a leader. That would be Torrey Pines itself, surely destined to look splendid in its prime time close-up.
Torrey Pines is primping for the royal treatment from television to showcase a golf course nestled on a bluff against rugged cliffs, yawning canyons and a grand expanse of water with foamy surf slapping oatmeal brown sand.
Figuring out who is going to look best in the picture taken against this kind of backdrop isn't hard; it essentially comes down to two players.
You know who they are. They're the local guys. They are so SoCal.
They know more about Torrey Pines than anybody in a visor, cap or whatever you call that thing Shingo Katayama wears on his head.
If there's a home-course advantage at Torrey Pines for the Open, it has to belong to Tiger Woods -- and Phil Mickelson.
But which one in particular?
A home advantage is not a new concept. At old Boston Garden, the Celtics figured they had an advantage because they knew how to dribble around all the dead spots in the floor. Nobody felt comfortable hitting the ice to play the Montreal Canadiens at the Forum.
But this is groundbreaking territory in golf, especially for a U.S. Open.
At Torrey Pines, Woods and Mickelson figure to have an edge over the 154 others in the field. They've played it so often, it's their grassy playpen.
You could build a case for either player. Woods has won the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines six times, the last four years in a row, including a record eight-shot victory in January. He even won a Junior World title at Torrey Pines and there's a picture of him in the pro shop as a lanky teen, holding his trophy and wearing spectacles that appear to be about the same size as a windshield.
Mickelson has three victories at Torrey in the Buick Invitational and he has played the place often enough they should start naming strains of grass there after him. Maybe Phil annua.
What's more, Mickelson lives right up the 5 Freeway from Torrey at Rancho Santa Fe, and that means he can play it on a regular basis, which he takes advantage of every time he can. Before the Buick this year, Mickelson played Torrey almost every day.
The house on the corner lot where Woods grew up in Cypress is about 90 miles from Torrey Pines, which was part of his regular playing schedule in the junior ranks long before he started taking the place apart as a professional.
