The Farmers Insurance Open should be great. (USATSI)
The Farmers Insurance Open should be great. (USATSI)

Dottie Pepper joins the CBS golf team this week at Torrey Pines. It will be her first broadcast with the crew, and we're all looking forward to it. I chatted with her recently about returning to broadcasting, what excites her about the field and how tough Torrey plays.

What are you most excited about with getting back out and broadcasting?

The live golf element. Simple as that. To be able to call it while you see it, as you know you're feeling it. That's the most exciting part of all of this. And getting to call it with a brand new team. It's going to be very, very cool.

How long does it take to build chemistry with a new team?

I think it will take a little while. I spent all yesterday with Peter [Kostis] in the tower at No. 16 just trying to gauge how he comes in and out. How the whole operation works. How information is processed. I've worked with Ian [Baker-Finch], Nick [Faldo] and Bill Macatee in the past. It will probably take a little time to learn the whole timing of everybody, but I think there's going to be a pretty darn decent chemistry right away.

Walk me through when you get to the tournament and how you prepare setting up for the broadcast.

It starts before you get to the tournament. You're checking out who's in the field, who the early commitments are, if there are any withdrawals before you get on site and interesting tee times and pairings in the first couple of days. [The early pairings] don't really apply to me on the air because I'm not doing Thursday and Friday coverage except for at the Masters and PGA Championship, but it sets the tone for the whole week. 

The PGA Tour provides a terrific packet of all the information that's going on. I stop in the media center. I stop and talk with the lead official. Anything that they notice, anything they do to set up the golf course differently or the same from last year. Then it comes down to who those pairings are and who's out hot fast. That could be the person I end up going with, and Peter [Kostis] would have the last group. You start talking about what you see, what you know and what you know the players are feeling.

Why has this course produced so many big name champions?

It's a ball-striker's golf course. It's not a golf course where you can hit just one shot. You have to be able to move the ball in different directions to get to some of these crazy hole locations. When [golf architect Rees] Jones re-did the golf course there are little fingers and segments of these greens that you can't just hit a straight shot all the time. You have to be able to flight the ball high and low and right and left. That's what those guys are particularly good at. It's a multi-dimensional sort of course. The topography is very interesting. You have a lot of holes that have a lot of slope in the fairways. Ball striking becomes a really big thing.

Is it more fun to have stars or no-name guys in contention?

When you get the up-and-comers involved, it makes it much more fun from a reporter's standpoint to watch how they react when they get under the gun for the first two or three times in their PGA Tour career. If things hold up the way they did through round one, we've got that potential. There are some really green players out there in terms of PGA Tour experience that we could be putting in our window to finish on Saturday and Sunday.

How surprised are you at the way Phil Mickelson has started 2016?

I'm not that surprised. He showed little signs at the Presidents Cup that things were starting to turn around. I think it was a huge boost for his confidence when he finished T3 at Palm Springs. And then coming here which is essentially a home game for him. He may not love the golf course and changes. You look at his record and he hasn't really done anything since [the changes Jones made]. He didn't have a good U.S. Open here. But there's still a hometown buzz about it. The way he turned it around on Thursday, nearly making ace at eight, and rode that momentum pretty much all through the back nine. I wouldn't be surprised to see him continue what he did last week.

Give me three golfers who intrigue you with the way they play and think about golf.

I'm very intrigued, and not because of the Mickelson controversy, with Ryan Ruffels. I covered him at the Asia-Pacific in Hong Kong. I've never seen a player that young have that command of the golf ball in different situations. He really had great control of the golf ball and had a lot of shots for a kid who was only 17 at the time. 

Harold Varner III, he's part of what's going on this week. He got off to a good start. There's attention on this guy. Second African-American to come through and earn his card via qualifying. He hits it a mile. He has a lot of shots. He's another player who's really cool to watch to see how he goes through this year.

Patton Kizzire, from a newer player standpoint. He admittedly wasn't 110 percent committed to his career early on. To turn it around the way he has and play as well as he did and come out of the Web.com the way he did last year. He played great in the fall. To see if he can maintain that going into the end of the west coast swing and right to the Florida swing and into the Masters potentially.