I'll just add a few cents to Dan's usual thoughtful analysis of this course.
I think the term "hidden gem" has been thrown around so much it's become something of a cliche, but it truly describes this place. A wonderful course, full of challenge and true architectural merit; as Dan remarked over beers afterward, it's the kind of place you're glad doesn't charge $50 a round, or it'd be more crowded (the lot of us paid $21.50 to play 36 holes -- it's the fall weekend all-day rate here).
Some thoughts:
-- The greens, in my view, are the real standouts here. Tougher to read and putt than Lawsonia, truly. Lawsonia's greens are well-known for their bold contours; at Salem, the contours are more subtle, and the course isn't afraid to put pins on the edges of the internal slopes. Much, much quicker than anytime I've ever played Lawsonia -- whether it's by luck or true knowledge of what they have, the folks who run Salem set up the greens as the course's true line of defense. Several greens just stood out as absolutely first-rate -- 6, 7 (eight-foot putt from above the hole, 12-foot putt coming back from below the hole -- I thought I'd barely tapped it); 9, 15, 17 and 18. Just playing these greens makes a trip here well worth the effort.
-- The course has a more intimate feel than Lawsonia, which has always impressed me as a "big" course, in part because of the sweeping views you get from the land there, and the lack of trees. It's not corridor golf at Salem, and I didn't feel that the trees diminished the play of the course. Oddly, the place where trees often came into play were on a few tee shots, where overhanging branches (for my game, anyway) forced you into teeing your ball on one side of the tee box. I'd encourage more tree-branch trimming here than an overall tree removal program of the sort Lawsonia has done.
-- The land here is flat in parts and wonderfully contoured in others; the most dramatic holes are the 7th, 8th, 9th and 18th, where Langford/Moreau utilized valleys to create blind shots and strong carries.
-- I've always thought Lawsonia has a very strong set of par 3s, but the 7th at Salem in my view could fit in there easily. 181 yards over a deep valley, with a grassy, severely sloped waste area left of the green that screams "don't go there," and a nearly diabolical green. I've never played Portrush's Calamity -- only seen pictures -- but it was the hole I thought of when I walked up to the tee for the first time. Truly a great hole.
-- In some ways, as Dan alluded to about the green pads, approach shots at Salem can be pretty exacting. The course comes with the traditional Langford/Moreau pushed-up greens, but because several of the greens are pretty small, the penalty for a miss can be severe, as you find yourself pitching onto those pushed-up greens and their contours. As is typical of a Langford/Moreau course, slight miss-hits into greens are often punished pretty severely. There are a lot of tough up-and-downs here (...Illinois GCAers will want to know that Dan made an awfully darn good up and down from above the hole at 18 to save his team's 1 up foursomes victory Sunday -- the equivalent of chipping down a sloped bathtub. The putt was conceded, it was that good of a chip.)
-- Course conditioning is generally good, though spotty in parts. The teeing areas were pretty chewed up, but the greens were in very good shape, as were the fairways. The rough was not long by any means (rather benign, in fact) and was consistent throughout the course (I spent a lot of time in it).
-- Several blind shots add to the allure of the course, and they come in all places -- tee shots (1 and 18, notably, but also subtlely at 2 and 12), blind 2nd shots, notably at the wonderful par 5 4th, and blind approaches, at the 8th e.g. if your drive is short or off-line. Langford/Moreau used both their signature mounds and the contours of the land to create a number of interesting blind shots.
-- The whole nature of the course is rather informal and blue-collar; it's one of the least-stuffy courses you'll encounter, from the house dog wandering around the putting green and clubhouse to the cigar-chomping maintenance guy/bartender who offered to open up the bar after we closed the course. (The bar serves Old Style in cans, for Chicago-area GCAers who fear missing the creature comforts of home by coming here to play.)
A fun course, worth the effort to seek out, and a stark contrast to the kind of golf you'd normally find at a low-range, daily-fee course.