By Alfie Lau

SAN DIEGO — The fact may be that the wraparound PGA Tour season started in October and Patton Kizzire has already won twice. In Orlando, the annual PGA Merchandise Show is drawing thousands of golf industry types.

But make no mistake about it, the PGA Tour season begins for real this week at Torrey Pines for the Farmers Insurance Open.

CBS makes its 2018 debut in San Diego, with its own trained camera crew providing the indelible images we’ve come to expect, not like the Sony Open in Honolulu, which was hamstrung by a strike by unionized Golf Channel personnel.

Oh, did we mention there’s a certain old feline returning to a familiar stage, exactly one year since he was last seen on the PGA Tour.

Torrey Pines is as big and brawny as it’s ever been with a star-studded field highlighted by a feature grouping of the last three champions at Torrey: Jon Rahm, Brandt Snedeker and Jason Day, out at 10:40 a.m. on the first tee of the South Course Thursday and 9:30 a.m. off the 10^th tee of the North Course on Friday.

While some golf fans will gravitate to this group, many more will watch these three tee off, then wait for the next group to play, featuring Patrick Reed, Charley Hoffman and Tiger Woods, he of the balky back, still hoping to exorcise the chipping yips and the undefeated Father Time, at a place where he most recently missed the cut (2017) and withdrew midway through the second round (2015).

For Canadian golf,  especially those who escape the Frozen North for the warm Cali climes, there’s a nice group of six Canucks teeing it up at Torrey. Abbotsford’s Nick Taylor, the former U Washington who tied for 20th last week, is paired with Rory Sabbatini and Michael Kim off the first tee of the North Course at 10:10 a.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. Friday off the 10^th tee, with Ben Silverman playing 50 minutes later each day, in the same rotation as Taylor.

The other 4 Canadians are playing in the same flight, with 10^th tee off the South Course Thursday and 1^st tee off the North on Friday. Abbotsford’s Adam Hadwin leads it off at 9:40 a.m. Thursday and 10:40 a.m. Friday with Smylie Kaufman and Alex Noren, while Ontario’s Corey Conners tees off 20 minutes after that. David Hearn and Mackenzie Hughes also follow in that rotation on Thursday, but tee off before Hadwin and Conners on Friday.

Conners and Silverman were also beneficiaries of the PGA Tour’s commitment to helping all its players. Commissioner Jay Monahan announced that the Tour had its annual rookie dinner on Monday night in San Diego, a chance for the rookies to get some face time with the commissioner and a chance to learn more about the world they had just entered.

Monahan couldn’t be more elated with his Tuesday, as the PGA Tour rented the Alfred Mitchell Room in The Lodge at Torrey Pines to announce that Farmers Insurance has signed up for another seven years to be title sponsor of the San Diego event.

Monahan remembers full well that Farmers stepped up in 2010, when the tournament, which has been held in San Diego since 1952, had no title sponsor with just 10 days to go until the start of the tournament. But Farmers, a local California company, not only helped out during a time of need, it has found such great benefit to this sponsorship that they are signed up until 2026.

Farmers even had its lead spokesperson, Rickie Fowler, crash the press conference and Fowler even playfully put his chair front and centre, for the photographers. Fowler joked that while he’s happy to play in San Diego, he has missed the last three cuts, so that necessitated a change in his schedule and the jettisoning of Abu Dhabi, the European Tour event held the week prior to  San Diego.