Yes, I finally was able to get to that spot in Simi Valley.
Here are my thoughts..
Getting off the freeway, taking a left on what turns into a residential street rather quickly. When all of a sudden the houses come to abrupt end and the road seems to narrow as you go over a slight blemish in the blacktop. That was no blemish. Likely a rut for some form of gate apparatus to slide along into, but wait...wait a cotton pick'in minute... It was a demarcation line between kingdoms. One moment you're on the outskirts of sprawl, and the next second you are in another kingdom. A golf kingdom, where the natural grassess and wildflowers are gracefully windswept. The long road to the clubhouse is but sweet anticiapation, dosed in the form of torture, because it just keeps going and going as you pass all this at grade golf. Remarkable was all I could think.
The first was a nice opener, back along the road just driven, with just the slightest hint of a fronting reparian. But that's just the prequil, to the green and it's ability to challenge even a fairly well travelled green reader. The second's front looking right bunker, complete with it's pimple, just before the actual green, was design comedy and genius. Tommy called me just after the third, to findout what I thought, so I don't remember much, but it was here, on the property, where the damage to the canyon and it's inhabitants was at it's worse.
Having the front nine disrupted from the recent alterations, I was a bit lost when finally put back into the routing. Or what I thought was the routing, not until #9 was I certain. By now I had joined a father and son who had both seen the course pre-destruction and gladly made the drive up from Santa Monica for a weekend tee time.
We golfed the entire backnine and I was clearly struck by it's uniqueness. The style is definitely my cup of tea and that's not because I made birdie on 14
from 225
electing to listen to my new found companions and due to wind direction, not challenge the trees, I played as safe as I did the on the second (and 5th) at CPC. I thought my eyes were deceiving me. I tried to ask the other two if that psot was really the 250 post, but they couldn't hear me, so i just trusted my inadequacies and hit a low running 3 wood that had a chance and stopped 12 feet past.
Figuring-out the greens was a constant thrill, all day long. Knowing I was up against a historian, I pulled-up my my best memories from other places, and trusted the artists ability to deceive. It worked.
All the hub ubb about the creosoaked range fence, and the clubhouse, is, IMO, a waste of bandwith and copy.
A special place, in, what in California is a common place. A valley.