Regarding bunkers. there are more "formalized" bunkers than I recall from previous visits. By that I'm referring to bunkers separated from the larger sandy dunescape by at least a small border of grass. And many of these contained rakes. All of which would lead me to believe they're prepared to offer the PGA an option of playing certain bunkers as bunkers and the larger sandy acreage as natural waste areas. That said, the caddies told us that there was "zero chance" of the PGA Championship doing anything different. They seemed certain it will all be waste area.
A week or so ago the course experienced a freak storm that dumped 8" of rain on the course in just over 24 hours. So they're in the process of literally pumping water out of the lagoons and ponds on the course because they are so over-full that the bunkers can not drain into them. Therefore, the majority of the bunkers were anywhere from wet and hard packed to out and out muddy. I might have even seen a spot or two of standing water. Very difficult to play from (as Rob Miller can attest after he and I shared a Keystone Cops adventure on the 16th hole).
The rest of the course is in great shape. The Paspalum grass really thrives on heat, even humid heat. I've never seen putting greens grow so much between morning and afternoon. Our morning round was at 8:30am and when I went back out at 3:15pm it was like putting on different greens. Notably slower and even some grain to contend with that wasn't there in the AM round. Fairways and rough are lush, firm enough to offer some running shot opportunities but still slightly on the wet side on the holes not exposed to the oceanfront breezes. The holes like 15-18 out along the beach are just awesomely firm-and-fast while still having plenty of grass under the ball that lies are not tight by any means. Very fun and inviting combination in combination with the prevailing 8-14mph sea breezes.
The "largest" change, yet at the same time so subtle it took me a while to notice, is that the waste areas lining many of the Par 4 and Par 5 holes have had their interface with the course completely re-engineered since I was there is 2009. Many of these were flat bottomed, hard-packed sand areas running all or most of the length of a fairway with a 3-foot to 7-foot vertical wall of railroad ties offering a hard boundary. Previously a ball in the fairway could run right over to the precipice and either stop due the the slight "lip" of rough located there or fall off the wall and down onto the bunker floor.
Those walls have been mostly (or maybe entirely) removed and replaced with moderately steep embankments with "first cut" length rough. And the top edge is now rounded and cambered. So balls approaching an edge of the fairway obliquely will tend to keep turning outward once they are within a couple yards of the edge. I'm not talking about an "event horizon" like some of the pot bunkers you'll see in the UK where balls 30-40 yards away will swoop toward the hollow. But balls that in past years at the Ocean Course would likely have been nudged gently to avoid falling over the walls will now happily clamber down.
That said, there is now a non-zero chance of ball stopping on one of those slopes rather than making it all the way down onto the flat sand. I had that happen twice in my afternoon round and for me (especially given the nasty wet hardpan sand) it's a real bonus. I like the chance that makes encountering a waste area more likely but if you do, getting out may end up being only halfway difficult instead of trying to elevate at ball over a five or six foot vertical railroad-tie bulkhead staring you in the face.
There are also three new, huge pot bunkers on the 12th fairway. Basically it is a second echelon of pots just 30-40 yards behind and parallel to the two (or was it three?) that were already there. My afternoon caddie had an interesting story of how they came about, presumably true or perhaps apocryphal. From the way-back tees, into the prevailing wind, even strong amateur players can nowadays choose a line off the tee that will "bite off" more of the diagonal water hazard than Pete Dye originally envisioned. That lets them aim to the right (closer to the hole) and a straight or righty-fade tee shot bypasses the original bunkers. So on a visit prior to the 2010 changes he made to the course, Mr. Dye went out and watched some big hitters play the hole. He marked the area where they were landing those tee shots and now there are three quite large fairway bunkers with considerably tall front edges making a play at the green from the bunkers quite demanding.
Funnily enough, I was playing from the forward tees basically a half-mile or so (it seemed) in front of the tournament tees. I aimed right of the bunkers, got a little fade up into the breeze and could have sworn it landed safely in the fairway short and right of all the bunkers. But no, it was caught up in the one closest to the fairway. The caddie remarked that half the fun of those new bunkers is you can't really tell from the tee whether you went in them or not. You have to wait while walking around the water harzard then up the fairway quite a ways to find out if you're safe or not. I was not, it required a 60-degree wedge back into the fairway then an approach shot of decent length from there to the green. Cool feature, although like all such things it probably will be less in play for the Tour players than for anyone else.
P.S. Let me add one other, personal comment. I spent two nights in an off-island hotel plus my 36 holes (caddies both rounds) and lunch at the Ocean Course. It was a terribly, ridiculously expensive experience for what in the end was 11 hours total on the property. Sean Arble would be horrified! Honestly if I weren't saving up for a trip to England in a few weeks I would try to squeeze in another trip to Kiawah before the close down for the PGA Championship. The entire day and especially the afternoon round was a real "mountaintop experience" kind of thing. I would say with the sole exception of the day I visited Cypress Point and MPCC it was as wonderful a time as I've ever had on a golf course. Once in a great while, even "terribly, ridiculously expensive" can actually offer value commensurate with its cost. This was one of those occasions.