Pat, hope you will play the Meadow Club at some point--and the Valley Club as it's been restored and regrassed. I think Pasatiempo, Valley and Meadow are all 3 great courses--showing off whom I consider the greatest golf architect ever. And showing his work with his associate, Robert Hunter.
I would love your opinion of how the 3 rate against each other. Any others played all 3 in, say, the last 2 years? How do you rate them against each other? No fair to comment if it's been more than 2-3 years, as they have all 3 been improved by light, but good, work.
I last played the Meadow Club more than three years ago but after the excellent work Mike DeVries did.
I have played Pasatiempo many times but not since Tom Doak and Jim Urbina changed the back of the 11th green. (Side note: why not just slow down the greens to ~9?). I have seen the earlier work such as 10.
I have played the Valley Club regularly for many years including twice this last February. Great work to conserve water and greatly expand the closely mown areas.
Here are my thoughts:
I would objectively rank the three Pasatiempo 1, Valley 2, Meadow 3. I think Pasa has the most dramatic holes and a wonderful back nine. The other two are very close, intimate in great settings and both more an experience of an 18 hole flow rather than a collection of holes that includes some gems.
Pasatiempo gets points off because of the residences encircling the course, too closely in some places. Valley has a handful, the Meadow is a pristine routing.
Meadow has some back and forth parallel holes on the second nine, mostly surrounded by the front nine in a semi-Muirfield routing.
All three have brilliant greens that range from "be very cautious about being above the hole" to "terrifying." Pasatiempo's 8th and 16th are probably the most frightening of the three sets.
All in all, this is a very close thing. If anything, the Meadow Club is very underrated.
I'd love to play any on a regular basis.