Any surprises on the rankings yet? Surprised the fur hasn't started flying....
Not a surprise, necessarily, but Quivira as it stands is not a Top 100 course, probably not even top 200. Disregarding certain faults like its inability to be walked and the turf (don't expect any roll), the biggest issue is that the goal seems to be views with a side of golf. The holes you'll see in promotional material (esp. 5 and 6) are full of eye candy, but are among the worst golf holes I've seen on such a highly-rated course. The entire fifth fairway slopes towards the ocean and there's hardly a landing zone. For those who find it (my group was one for four, and the one was a lucky deflection off the rocks right), the approach is completely blind and straight downhill to a small cliffside green (we also lost three of four approach shots). It's the only drivable par four I've seen where you'll likely lose more balls by laying up than going for the green. Six is better, but a 13 yard wide green is insufficient (period, but especially) when left and right are death and most players have a mid-iron into a stiff wind. And those are only the photo-friendly holes. On several others (7, 11, 14, 16 are some), I stood on the tee wondering why, if Nicklaus is willing to move so much dirt, he wouldn't move [insert landform here]. Admittedly, it's a very tough site, but there had to have been better solutions, especially when green-to-tee walks are no constraint.
Moreover, it suffers from a lack of finish that probably isn't permanent, but that should keep the course out of rankings until it is established. A lot of this is probably due to a big storm about a month ago that sent a good deal of water through the arroyos and elsewhere, but they were employing hay bales and netting to protect certain landforms and to keep the turf from being swallowed by sand. That said, CDS Ocean didn't seem to have such problems, so hopefully with time they'll figure that maintenance out. Also, it's rumored that if/when Nicklaus comes back to build another 18 (it's still in the "people associated with the club excitedly talking about it" phase of development), he'll soften 5 and 6, and hopefully fix 11 and 14 at the least. I think it easily could be a Top 100 course, but I'm also not sure the club has the mentality to make it such. We'll see. It's no Diamante and no CDS Ocean, at least not yet.