Tiger Woods sacked his former agent Hughes Norton (Image: Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images)
The Torrey Pines will always bear witness to the legendary game Tiger Woods has played on its South and North courses. Torrey Pines is Woods’s playground, and rightfully so! The 82-time PGA Tour winner has clinched eight wins in his illustrious career at Torrey Pines!
Out of the eight wins, seven were taken at the Farmers Insurance Open, and the eighth was the iconic comeback of Woods for his 14th major win at the 2008 U.S. Open. It’s a record for Woods’s three-decade-old career with eight wins each at Bay Hill, Firestone, and Torrey Pines. Let us take a look at why Torrey Pines can be called Tiger’s Den.
Winning streaks of Tiger Woods that no one could break till now
In 1998, Tiger Woods played at the Buick Invitational (Farmers Insurance Open) for the first time at Torrey Pines. At that time, it was quite seeable that Woods would become a fine golfer, but not as legendary as he has become. In the third year of his pro-life career, he carded T3 at the Buick Invitational.
A year later, in 1999, the then-23-year-old Woods won for the eighth time on the PGA Tour by carding a par-5 eagle to defeat Billy Ray Brown. This was his first of eight victories over Torrey Pines. The next win was at the 2003 Buick Invitational, right after he got his left knee operated. The period between the two wins was not unamusing as well. From 2000 to 2002, Woods’s finishes looked something like this: 2nd, 4th, and 5th.
And then came the worst finish for Woods at Torrey Pines in that decade. In 2004, he was tied for 10th. It was still a good run and one that catapulted his next five consecutive victories over Torrey Pines. From 2005 to 2008, Woods won the Buick Invitational four times. The fifth victory at the Pines was when he won the 2008 U.S. Open.
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Tiger Woods was struggling with a torn ACL at the 2008 U.S. Open and yet won in the playoffs against Rocco Mediate. This was not the last victory for Woods at Torrey Pine. However, the next title came four years later, after three missed games and one low performance.
Tiger Woods’s last win at the Torrey Pines
After winning at the U.S. Open in 2008, the 15x major champion did not win anything at Torrey Pines for quite a while. Mainly because he missed the three editions of the Farmers Insurance Open in 2009, 2010, and 2012. His performance in 2011 was a forgetful one as he had just come back from a break after his divorce.
Woods was tied for 44 at Torrey Pines, which was his second-worst performance at the South Courses after T80 in 2014. Nonetheless, the three-time U.S. Open champion made history in Torrey Pines and earned $7,177,379 from the Farmers Insurance Open alone, and an additional $1,350,000 from the 2008 U.S. Open propels it to nearly $8 million. Now, Tiger Woods may never tee it up at Torrey Pines, but his legacy will always loom large.
