Torrey Pines gets rave reviews from players and ‘Open doctor’

The 121st U.S. Open at Torrey Pines South was decided Sunday afternoon, on the par-4, 434-yard 17th hole. Jon Rahm birdied it and won. Louis Oosthuizen bogeyed it a half-hour later and lost by a stroke. But, really, it was decided years earlier, when high winds and the dreaded Japanese beetle and old age took their toll on the course’s namesake trees perched on the edge of the canyon bordering the left side of the fairway. They were still standing when golf course designer Rees Jones embarked on his 2001 facelift of Torrey South for the 2008 U.S. Open; they were gone when he tweaked it again i...