To refer to Pasatiempo as a “cartball course”, as someone recently did, is just wrong. The membership is not particularly young, yet most of them, men and women, love the walk.
To refer to the greens as “lacking subtlety” is also wrong. Sure, the big breaks and elevation changes are obvious but there is so much else going on that the golfer only recognizes after watching what his/her putt [unexpectedly] does belies that opinion.
Recall how the course was built (‘28-‘29) with horse-drawn skids shaping the fairways. Then look around at the surrounding topography, the hills and the barancas. The routing is genius, imho. If the good doctor and his patroness had wanted to forego the hills and build a flatter course, they could have focused on the land to the west of nos. 12-14 around Graham Hill Road and the horse show grounds where the early club had its steeplechase course.
Lastly, the rolling topography so resembled a certain Georgia nursery, and the course routed through that topography so inspired the vision of .... well, as they say, the rest is history.