(This is so tardy. I apologize.) I use “English” both to mean a spin on a situation and to refer to the winner of the 2025 Farmers Insurance Open. Harris English won the tournament by one stroke, finishing eight under par.
But the other “English” was that golf was not the most dominant topic among my volunteers on 3 South, the par three above the Pacific. Most of our attention was on fires.
The tournament took place January 21-25, Tuesday-Saturday. The fires in LA had started two weeks earlier and were in the forefront of people’s minds. But so was the local weather. High winds were forecast throughout the tournament and no rain.
Tuesday was the pro-am event. First tee-off was at dawn and we were all supposed to be in place by then. I’m about an hour north of the course, so I was on the road significantly pre-dawn. I headed east toward the 15, the inland north-south freeway, instead of the 5, the freeway along the coast.
As I approached the 15, I saw red brake lights all along the south lanes. Nobody moving. Had no idea why that was the case, but I turned around and headed for the 5. Couldn’t be worse. Maybe 20 minutes later, I heard on the car radio that traffic was stopped on the 15 in Bonsall, just south of Fallbrook, because of a fire.
It was in the same general area as the fire that, in 2017, required me to evacuate. (You can see my post on that event here. And I soon thereafter learned it had the same name, the “Lilac Fire,” which is based on location, near Lilac Road.)
When I got to the course, I was able to access “Watch Duty,” an app that gives status of reported fires. It showed that evacuations had been ordered near the fire and warning zones were close by, i.e., about two miles from our home. Here’s a Watch Duty map showing location and evacuation zones.
I figured that if we ended up in a evacuation warning zone, I was returning home. (The evac zones never expanded.) So, from the start, attention was on the fire more than the golf.
It wasn’t long after play began on Wednesday that we learned there was another fire alongside the 15, the Center Fire, in Rancho Bernardo. That was near the home of one of my marshals and she had to leave.
By Thursday, the Border 2 Fire was also underway in South County, joined on Friday by the Friars Fire in Mission Valley and the Gilman Fire in La Jolla, right next door. More volunteers needed to head home.
Rather than looking at ball flights, we spent a lot of time scanning the horizon for smoke . . . and too often seeing it.
On Thursday, play was halted in the early afternoon because 35+ mph wind gusts were making balls on the greens oscillate. I think a lot of people did not expect play to resume that day. And with the additional fires in the area, the choice between standing around on the course with nothing happening or heading home to check things out seemed clear.
Someone on the radio network used by hole captains reported, “Many volunteers are leaving the course.”
Play was resumed, however, but had to be called again before completion of the round because of darkness. With travel time included, it meant a 13-hour work day for me.
Friday was the only relatively calm day of the tournament, at least weather-wise. The final round Saturday was the only time the tournament was on network TV and it must have been a bummer for the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. National viewers saw fans in sunny San Diego wearing parkas as temperatures only got to the upper 50s. Hardly encouraging tourism-wise.
Thanks again to the gallery management and competition support volunteers manning 3 South!
