What other work has been done on the course besides the walking bridges. I have always really like the course but it felt like it needed to be finished. By that I mean some of the tee boxes were kind of ragged and the bunkers never really drained very well.
Working from memory, here's what I can think of:
-A bunch of work was done on the left side of the #4 fairway where balls used to run into the woods and drainage creek. There's some new mounding, sand, and plants over there. Doesn't help you get away with anything better than a bogey, but you'll find your ball now.
-Significant tree removal on the left side of 8. Other than the visual of opening up views and breeze from the lake, it helps keep that low side from being a marshy pit.
-There are a few new fans on greens. #3 is new for sure, not sure exactly when the others were installed.
-Lots of new tee boxes have been added. Some of them are home runs that needed to be done. There's a new white tee on 8 that plays as well as the blue one for a shorter hitter. There are a lot of new tee boxes on various holes, but the most significant I can think of for the white tees are on 1, 5, and 15. The 15 one is still in progress and should be good. It's hard to do much with #5 with the lake, but I think it's a little better. I'm not a fan of the new one on #1. It's too short and too far to the right given what it seems "white" should be for the course. If they add a new color between blue and white such that white is somewhere in the < 5700 range, then it would be fine. There are enough tee box options, including new back tees on 8 and 13. I've heard there will be new back tees on 1 and 4 after the clubhouse is done. There should be another color added somewhere between 5800 and 6500 (plus allow for combo tee options), if it were up to me. The infrastructure is there already to do it.
-They were adding some new drainage on the blue/black tee box last week.
-There was some subtle tree removal on the left side of the 13th fairway. Your odds of finding your ball and having a play out of there improved.
-I was a little concerned about the bunker renovation, but I think it's turned out well. I was concerned things would get a little too "manicured", but it feels like they fit in with the scrub well. What I was told is that previously when it rained hard, they basically had to rebuild all the bunkers. Rather than playing any different, the theory was that it would help maintenance significantly. They had to do a bunch of tests, but were ultimately still able to use on-site sand to fill the new bunkers. It needed to be sifted a little to drain well enough to take advantage of the underground drainage.
-I'm not a grass expert, but there really seems to be a plan in place for how they want the course to play. The bent greens were phenomenal into July (yes, you read that right), then they did a bunch of work in August, supposedly to make it play fire fast this fall. In the past, I never felt like it played firm enough in the fall compared to winter, but if that works, I'll be thrilled. A week or 2 ago they were trucking some kind of mix and spreading it on all the fairways.
Other than refining the tee mix a little bit with the boxes that already exist, the 3 holes I still feel like could use some TLC are 7, 9, and 11. 7 is never going to be a redan with the tilt of the green, but the left "fairway" and hill is too spongy and maybe not sloped quite right to ever get the ball to roll onto the green from over there. I still aim over there when I play a longer tee, but that's because it's a good place to get up and down rather than because I expect any particular bounce or roll. 9 is a little tricky for 1st-timers that don't realize it plays longer than the yardage, but it's not super interesting for repetitive play. I'm not 100% sure what I'd do, but I don't think it plays as well as a comparable hole like the 5th at Wekopa. That hole has a bunch of different tiers and slopes to work with, but Dormie's is usually just a "hit the middle tier" hole because the front is false, and the back is too small for most players. A good player could go for that back tier by playing to the middle tier and taking spin off, but I've never seen anybody try or execute it.
11's still the odd ball in my book. They've cleaned up the scrubby area on the right, but that just means some people that aren't afraid of an approach off of sand can blast it over there and have a better look at the flag. An alternate short porch off the tee option on the right would be intriguing. There's some "hog's back" potential to the fairway as well since there's runoff on both sides of the fairway, but there's no real advantage to being in the middle. If the middle was not blind, but the sides were, that would be fun as well. Right now, the only place that isn't blind is the sand on the right. The green is also better attacked from the right side because it slopes left to right with a backstop that you can use if you're in that sandy area. The tee shot just isn't that interesting and the fairway to green angles/options are incongruent.
Overall, I'm thrilled with the direction I've seen it take. Cinderella is finally getting her chance to go to the ball after years of nothing but conditioning complaints. Hopefully people aren't too distracted by the clubhouse and cottage improvements to notice how far the course has come.