VENUE FIT FOR A MAJOR: TORREY PINES Philip Reidlooks at the venue for this week's US Open, Torrey Pines in southern California, and reckons it's a course that will drive the sane demented.

THE LOCALS refer to it as the "June Gloom", a metrological phenomenon pretty unique to this area of southern California which guarantees early morning cloud cover rather than strong sunshine; and, as planned, it was in such conditions yesterday that Tiger Woods, Bubba Watson and Jordan Cox, an amateur qualifier who is an undergraduate at Woods's old stomping ground of Stanford University, kick-started Monday's practice at Torrey Pines.

As precursors for the US Open went, it was a three-ball that encapsulated the right for any golfer to dream. It's just that some golfers - ahem, Woods - are better equipped to realise such dreams than others. But practice days are as important to an amateur qualifier as they are to the world's number one, especially on a course such as the one here at Torrey Pines that should indulge the USGA's philosophy to make this championship "the most rigorous, but fair, examination of golf skills".

The South Course at Torrey Pines has been set up at 7,643 yards, a layout that is 379 yards longer than any previous US Open course, but it is playing to a par of 71 rather than a par 70 as has more often than not been the case in recent decades. The last time the US Open was played on a par 71 layout was at Pebble Beach in 2000.

Back then, eight years ago, playing host to a US Open was only an aspiration for Torrey Pines, a municipal course that in a previous life was a World War II training area called Camp Callan for the US military, who had leased 750 acres from the city of San Diego. It was only when the camp became defunct was the land set aside for golf.

It was in 1999 that a committee was first established to investigate the possibility of bringing a US Open to Torrey, and it was in Pebble Beach in 2000 that the first contact was made with golf course Rees Jones about remodelling Torrey Pines so that it could be capable of playing host to the championship.

Torrey Pines' approach was timely. "To be candid," said Mike Davis, the USGA's senior director of rules and competitions, "one of the selling points for us possibly going to Torrey Pines was that we hadn't been to southern California since Riviera (in Los Angeles, where Ben Hogan won in 1948)."

When Jones - who had redesigned Bethpage Black in anticipation of the 2002 US Open - took up the invitation to visit Torrey Pines, he was immediately taken by the terrain. The cliffs. The ocean.

"It's one of the great golf sites in the golf world, you just don't find an upland site along cliffs very often," remarked Jones, who characterised the work he did at Bethpage as the "resurrection" of a classic layout that had been allowed to go to seed.

At Torrey Pines, he thought a more dramatic approach was necessary to restore essential elements of the original design by William "Billy" Bell and, at the same time, make the course worthy of staging a US Open.

He built new tees and totally rebuilt the green complexes, tightened the landing areas by repositioning some bunkers, added other bunkers, and deepened all of them. About the only thing Jones didn't tinker with was Bell's original routing.

The work on the South Course began in the summer of 2001 - helped by "The Friends of Torrey Pines" raising in excess of $3.5 million in fundraising and donations - and was completed by the late-autumn, hindered only by the terrorist attacks of September 11th that year when Rees and his staff couldn't fly to California and truck loads of turf from Arizona were prevented from crossing state lines.

Jones originally lengthened the South Course by about 515 yards, for a total of 7,607 yards. More recently, he built another tee on the 13th hole, which added another 75 yards. His idea was to make players fly their tee shots some 250 yards over the canyon between the course and the Pacific Ocean.

And, in addition, some greens were moved to bring canyons and cliffs more into play. All were re-contoured to make approaches more challenging.

"We designed them like you'd find at classic old courses like Westchester (in New York), with these little plateaus, small sections of the green within a moderately sized surface. Those plateaus have to be hard to hit because players spin the ball more than ever. Here, they're going to have to hit shots that will basically release the ball toward some of these plateaus."

But it is in bringing the cliffs and canyons more into play that Jones has turned Torrey Pines into the spectacular course that it is for this challenge. For instance, on the downhill, par three third hole, he shifted the green about 35 yards to the left, making the hole both 25 yards longer and much more perilous as the canyon now borders the green ready to claim shots hit left or long.

On the fourth, Jones not only moved the green to the left over towards the cliff but also shifted the fairway about 10 yards close to the precipice. The greens on the seventh, 14th and 16th were all moved for similar reasons.

After the work was completed, the USGA inspected the new-look Torrey Pines . . . and liked what they saw. The course had been transformed from a tame cat into one capable of bearing its teeth under the conditions that the USGA use in setting-up a course for its championship.

Jones is especially proud of the 14th, a 435 yards par four that he believes will be regarded as one of the great holes in championship golf.

"The canyon is in play on the left of the hole and behind it. What that means is that if players go for the plateaus on either side of the left or right side of the green, they could easily go off it . . . but, if they play safe, by going for the centre of the green, they'll have a really difficult two-putt. So there are a lot of shot options and potential disasters there."

But it is not the 14th, but the 12th, that Jones predicts will play toughest of all this week. At 504 yards, the 12th is the longest par four on the course and plays into the prevailing wind.

"Even the best players in the world will have to hit long irons into that green," said Jones.

However, the USGA resisted the temptation to make the finishing 18th a long par four and have kept it as a par five of 573 yards where, as Jones put it, "all the players have the opportunity to go for it in two and make up some ground . . . that could be the determining hole of this championship".

Making it to the 72nd hole on Sunday is what it is all about, as those players who got a first look at the course in practice yesterday discovered.

Making it to the 72nd hole on Sunday while still in contention is an even bigger ask. The fairways range in width from 24 to 33 yards. On either side of the fairways, a six-foot wide swath of intermediate rough running the length of each hole has been set to one and three-quarter inches with the next band of primary rough set to two and one-quarter inches and the greens are running at 13 to 13½ on the stimpmetre. The primary rough around the greens is set at three inches.

As Jack Nicklaus put the challenge of winning a US Open, "there's lot of fellas who show up on Monday and they are scared of the rough. They yell about the height of it. They yell about the firmness of the greens. They yell about this and they yell about that. And by the time Thursday rolls round, they're wound up about everything that's wrong and they can't do anything right."

Torrey Pines, you figure, more than any course will drive the sane demented.

It promises to be some challenge.

"But it is in bringing the cliffs and canyons more into play that Jones has turned Torrey Pines into the spectacular course that it is for this challenge