Matt, is the Spring Hills you mention the one in Watsonville? It’s been decades since I’ve played it so maybe I’m missing something, but it was (& still is according to its website) a par 71 course that barely tops 6,000 yards.
Yep. I went there purely from a discussion I had with a local talking about how I was more interested in "interesting" courses than "good" courses. When I say it's difficult, I'm not talking about the length, I'm talking about the land. It's just such a weird course. You'll often be blocked out by trees in weird places. There are doglegs where it's hard to hold the fairway... at the dogleg. The first green is a good example of what I'm talking about. If you miss the green at all, you're pretty much dead:
The front nine mostly feels like flat farmland golf, until you randomly end up hitting off the top of a huge hill:
The best part of the course (in my opinion) is the adorable farmhouse that has been converted into a clubhouse. I could spend hours here watching people playing the (again bizarre) 18th hole, and be perfectly happy all afternoon:
Would I recommend the course, itself? I mean, not really. Do I think it's worth visiting though, as a curiosity? Sure. It's really interesting. It's
really weird. It's pretty enough if you're into a bucolic feel, but the course just kind of randomly goes from boring to crazy and interesting to boring again, to needlessly penal, to too easy.