I spent the Holidays in Northern California and had the pleasure of playing Pasatiempo with Mrs. Huckaby and Pierracci, MPCC Dunes with Mr. Huntley and Harding Park with a close childhood friend.
Pasatiempo has been discussed at length on this board. I'm not sure I have anything to add to the discussion. This was the first time I had seen the course after renovations had been completed and the course remains terrific and in great condition even at this wet time of year.
The MPCC Dunes course is a wonderful test of golf. In particular, it features one of the strongest set of par threes around. Several new back tees have been added in anticipation of potentially moving the Crosby to the Dunes course in the future.
Bob gave me a tour of the Shore course. I must be one of those people that needs to play a course to get a feel for it but I sure wanted to pull out my clubs. One really appreciates that the club went to the expense of capping the fairways with sand, leaving a firm playing surface in the middle of winter. I also understand that the 18th hole will be changed but I did not take the time to study the drawings in the clubhouse to understand the changes.
Harding Park was also an enjoyable experience. I played with a good friend and we had a spirited match. One of the pleasures of municipal golf is getting paired up with a wide variety of characters and we had the good fortune to be paired with an enthusiastic 8th grader who has the rough edges of an outstanding game, was excited about the day and was a terrific conversationalist.
Despite the enjoyable experience, I was very surprised and disappointed with the course. The bones of a very good golf course are there. I liked the par threes quite a bit and also liked the variety of the par fours and fives - some birdie opportunities sprinkled between many tough holes. The trees are majestic and the setting fantastic.
Overall, the layout seemed fine to me (although I would widen several fairways to bring ravines and preferred approach angles into play) but I was shocked at its condition. For $16 million, one would expect that something would have been done to firm up the fairways. Much of the time the ground was more liquid than solid. The greens were also in suprisingly poor condition even though it appeared that most of the work on the course focused on improving the greens and their surrounds.
Perhaps it is impossible to have a course that is anything but a mud bog on that site. I'm sure the course is quite enjoyable during drier portions of the year. Nonethless, given the setting, the history and the expense poured into the course, it is a pity that the results could not have turned out better.