Mike,
I played in one of those press sneak peak days. It was cold, so few showed up and I played it with Tripp Davis, getting the full insight as we went.
First, the Tribute scottish course is very good as those things go and a pretty good golf course in its own right. You will enjoy it unless you are a member of golf course cynics.com.
The New American Club, I thought, was going to be copies of famous American holes but they are all originals and the course still has a bit of a Scottish feel to me. It has 134 bunkers. According to Tripp, the two things they tried to do in the design were:
Fool the eye. There are many tee shots where some of those 134 bunkers are in the near foreground hiding the perfect line from the tee while the safe line is visible. In other cases the bunkers cleveraly fool you on distance perception. An example is the driveable par 4 16th. There are four bunkers that look like they ring the green blocking entry, but in reality some of them sit well short of the green and allow the roll up. In that sense, if you are playing for score, you will want to play twice.
Fool putting strokes. Tripp and Justin have divided the greens with many subtle ridges. He calls it working off the middle and the result is not unlike Pinehurst No. 2. The theory is that the only way to fool Tour Players on a putt's distance judgement is to have both uphill and downhill components to a putt. It's very subtle, but unless you land very close to the pin, on many greens you will have a putt either down and up a ridge or up and down, etc. there will be some left and right breaks in each putt, too.
You will also have to take note of which areas of the greens drain away from you when planning your approach shot. Not only that, but the contouring of the greens and their layout make a few of them not appear exactly as they are and deciding which portion of the green to hit to may be a challenge on some holes and/or from some portions of a few fw.
The overall ambiance is good, with only partial paths and those being gravel. Except for a few holes being weak, it was grown in Novmember when I played and it won't have changed much over the winter.