Torrey Pines (California, USA), Jun 16 (EFE) .- The course of Torrey Pines, home of the 121st edition of the US Golf Open, is getting tougher every day to receive the 156 golfers who will compete this week in the third big one of the year.
Torrey Pines harbors the memory of one of the most exciting US Open in recent history, when legendary American golfer Tiger Woods won his third and final US Open (2000, 2002, 2008) with a broken leg in an agonizing playoff against his compatriot Rocco Mediate.
More than a decade later, Tiger Woods has broken both his legs again, this time in a serious car accident that has kept him out of the competition for months. And Torrey Pines is once again welcoming the best in the world with tall grass and hard, dizzying greens.
Woods’ absence has yielded the limelight to veteran Phil Mickelson, the local star who turns 51 today and just won the sixth major of his career at the May PGA Championship on Kiawah Island.
Phil and his brother Tim, who will bring him the bag again this week, are some of the brothers who will compete this week at Torrey Pines, along with Italian golfers Francesco and Edoardo Molinari, Mexicans Álvaro and Carlos Ortiz, and Spaniards Rafa and Miguel Cabrera Bello, another fraternal player and caddy team.
Among the younger generation, American Xander Schauffele, world number six who has forged his career in San Diego, and Spanish Jon Rahm, third in the world, who won his first PGA Tour victory (2017) in Torrey, start as favorites. Pines and just got over the coronavirus.
In this 121st edition of the United States Open, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the victory of the American golfer of Mexican origin Lee Treviño in the 1971 Open, a historical number of Latin Americans participate, among them the Ortiz brothers and the also Mexican Mario Carmona and Abraham Ancer.
The Argentine Fabián Gómez, the Chilean Joaquín Niemann, the Colombian Juan Sebastián Muñoz, the Peruvian Luis Fernando Barco, the Venezuelan Jhonattan Vegas, the Costa Rican Luis Gagne and the Spanish Sergio García, winner of the 2017 Masters, complete the unprecedented figure of 13 Spanish speakers at a US Open.
The large Latino population in the area, a short distance from the border with Mexico, and the presence of spectators thanks to the beginning of the lifting of restrictions by Covid in California will make it possible to hear ovations and shouts of encouragement in Spanish during the four days tough competition on the shores of the Pacific.
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