I wanted to take some time to gather my thoughts and reflect on what I saw before I posted on the quality of the course due to my poor first impression BEFORE the round began.
I think Mirimichi is in the top quartile of public courses in the metro Memphis area. That being said it could have, and SHOULD have, been so much more, particularly for the enormous amounts of money thrown at the course.
For anyone that has played its predecessor Big Creek, then you won't find many surprises here. The routing is almost exactly the same, which is big disappointment #1 for me, specifically on the front nine. The first hole was straightened out instead of being a dogleg left that wrapped around a lake. Now the lake is still on the left, but has been taken more out of play. I think the new first hole is an improvement. The remainder of the front nine is mostly the same, except that they added new bunkers and lots of humpy bumpy earth movement throughout. One thing I found unsightly, though it admittedly doesn't impact the play or the architecture, was the odd use of two very different colors of sand. A few holes have a "waste" area with brown sand couple with bunkers full of white sand. Now if the waste bunker was using the natural sandy soil of the area that might be one thing, but I'm pretty certain this course isn't built on sand. Not really sure why they went with two totally different colors, particularly since the waste area was perfectly maintained and had a rake in it...
The weakness of Big Creek, in my opinion, was always the front nine. The back nine is on more interesting terrain and wanders a bit more. The front nine is on mostly flat ground and the routing does nothing inspire the golfer as it is primarily back and forth and back and forth the whole way. Mirimichi did nothing to improve the interest in my opinion. The holes all look much nicer now, and a few play more interestingly than before, but not much. One major downside on the playability of the front nine is that they added many very long grassy areas. I saw several groups looking for lost balls, and we lost a few of our own. This slows down play on the front nine immensely.
The back nine is essentially the same routing as well, though they went out of their way to better define the creeks that were running through the property by building a massive waterfall that is pumping water through the creek. Other than perhaps a few greens which are now more interesting than before, as a whole the back nine didn't step up the game from the prior design in my opinion.
The good news is that apparently Justin Timberlake has unlimited wealth, so they should probably pump more money into the upkeep of the course. Big Creek was always spotty at best when you visited. I'm sure his name, as well as the nice facilities, will attract a number of golfers, at least in the short term, but I don't see this as a course that should draw anyone from out of the area.
At the end of the day, I'm going to come back to my original post on this thread. The course is HIGHLY walkable. I am honestly totally shocked that with JTs backing, and all the press about the green friendly course that they won't allow you to walk the course. As for pace of play that the guy in the pro shop cited. Well, my weekday morning round on a mostly empty course took 4:45 in a cart because of all the people in front of us playing slowly. It is pretty insulting for someone to suggest to me that I can't keep up with a 4:45 pace on my feet.