I think one should have a good entry for this thread every year in order to consider the golf season well-rounded. I've played some incredible courses this year, but not much that I didn't know would be great beforehand. With a baby in the house I've had to sacrifice quantity for quality, but exploring the unheralded courses is one of my favorite things in golf.
I'd rather be offering something like a Copake Lake, but I guess my biggest positive surprise would be that I found myself genuinely enjoying Troon North. It's the antithesis of so many of the things I believe in golf, and I have no great desire to play it again, but sometimes a day at Disneyland really can be fun. I accidentally rousted a javelina from a bush while searching for a hooked drive in the desert--quite an exciting moment for both of us! I wish I had taken my camera for a great moment on the par-3 16th--off to the left there was a multimillion-dollar house with a clutch of MILFs having sunset cocktails on the expansive patio. And right next to the house, slightly upslope, was a gargantuan, three-story tall boulder, probably half the size of the house, perched on a diamond point at an incredibly precarious angle. The metaphorical nature of the scene was obvious and amusing. That's all off-course stuff, but I thought TN had a solid variety of holes and a bunch of memorable (in a good way) moments. And on the most basic level, it's pretty playable--something that isn't always the case when it comes to desert courses.