SAN DIEGO — Coastal skies uncorked a flirtatious round of Hokey Pokey during Friday's second round of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. Put a wet foot in. Pull a wet foot out. Shake the club-gripping uncertainty all about.
The day that began as an exercise in flawed weather reports lasted until lunch, as conditions on radar images resembling the shade of a technicolor bruise slept in. When the 153-player field cautiously poked heads out to find reassuring morning blue, it appeared a wet and windy gremlin might be dodged.
Then Mother Nature stopped hitting the snooze button.
"It's hard to tell you if you don't play," said Jon Rahm, one shot off the lead at 8-under, when asked about the grating grind. "Those fairways are narrow enough as it is. When you start adding the side wind, it's just not fun."
Veteran tournament followers with salt-and-pepper chins say that other than 2016, when overnight winds topping 60 mph uprooted the course's signature, namesake trees, the weather rarely has been so sour in more than two decades.
Torrey Pines gets wet. It starts days with blankets of dew. It wanders through morning fog. Eventually, though, the place cooperates.
They played on in 1969, when rain dogged Jack Nicklaus' march to victory. They kept swinging in 1971, when fog threatened to pull the plug on George Archer's win. Fuzzy Zoeller held it together through wind, rain, hail and a 15-minute scramble for shelter in a TV truck in 1979.
When Scott Simpson pocketed the big check at the Buick Invitational in a tournament trimmed to 54 holes because of rain in 1998, it was just the third time in 31 events that Torrey Pines had lost a round to weather.
The third round succumbed to fog in 1992, while a third round was washed out in 1986.
Toughening the track, even incrementally, makes the uphill leaderboard climb even more daunting. Especially on the toothy South Course, which shreds enough shots and plans in the best of conditions. Torrey's looming U.S. Open date in June provides proof aplenty.
Upgrade the dental work when weather kicks in and the spot becomes a scorecard-chomping shark.
"The temperature going down just makes that wind so heavy and the ball goes short," said Adam Scott, who survived a tour of the South to settle at 8-under. "I mean, it's really hard to adjust perfectly to that on the fly.
"… You're just doing your best and trying not to make a big error, but it's hard to all of a sudden see the ball's going 30 yards shorter than normal."
No one strapped in for the roller coaster of conditions more than Scott Bentley, who shepherds the City of San Diego's golf division. Torrey Pines is his to manage, manicure and obsess about.
As Bentley plopped his head on a pillow Thursday night, the playing prognosis was not good. Overnight rain was supposed to be an appetizer with as much as an inch and a half predicted by the close of Round 2. Bentley deployed a crew of about 75 workers — roughly twice as many as they used to fight the elements in 1998 — to head off issues at 5 a.m.
Torrey Pines leans on an army of sumps, four or five on No. 1 South alone, to drain water from greens, bunkers and stubborn fairways.
The problem child is the fairway on No. 1 South. When they began pumping out water at daybreak, the torrid flow mimicked a Brooklyn fire hydrant opened to beat the heat on the Fourth of July.
"It was pretty impressive," Bentley said.
Initially, the weather gods cooperated. Bentley said a few volunteers from the Nicklaus-designed Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, conducted a "No Rain Dance."
"I guess I'll have to give them an extra burger for lunch," he said.
Then, the Hokey Pokey revved back to life. At 12:20 p.m., light hail briefly covered greens on one section of the course. The rain returned as Phil Mickelson's body-contorting reaction to a missed approach shot caused raindrops to fly from his face in multiple directions.
The Farmers battered Top 20 players Sungjae Im (tied for 55th), Brooks Koepka (T122) and Harris English (T138).
As Mickelson hit from the fairway on No. 17 South, an announcer from the Golf Channel ball-parked the conditions: "It's ridiculous out here right now." Shortly after, the broadcast jokingly predicted the arrival of locusts.
The horn sounded, suspending play at 3:23 p.m. About 45 minutes later, stragglers sidelined by hail and heavier rain returned to finish up.
"It was nasty out there," Ryan Palmer said.
The tournament mired in weather flux survived, however, to fight another day.
Or two days, to be exact.
"South (Friday must be) brutal, I mean absolutely brutal," Rahm said. "Every shot counts out there. Even being on the fairway, some shots are not easy with this wind and rain coming in and out. For those who played the North, we should (feel) really fortunate."
Nothing hokey about that.
