I played the latest version of Palo Alto Muni (aka Baylands) last Sunday afternoon, on a typical windy (+15-25 MPH) afternoon. I believe this is the 4th version of the course since I first teed it up in the early '70s.
The redesign is interesting, I like the back 9 is better than the front, with wide (connecting fairways on a few holes) undulating (machine-made) fairways, interesting greens and a pretty good set of par 3s. Punchbowl, tiers, swales, front-to-back camber are all features in these green sites. They removed a ton of trees, left a few strategic ones so it is viewed as a wide open landscape.
The front 9 has 3 holes that make me scratch my silver locks, narrow, an elevated green, water (or at least what I assume will be water) encroaching the fairway, spells disaster for the bogey golfer. Just doesn't seem to click to me as a set-up for fast play (or not slow play) in this stretch.
The fairway grass, I assume, was chosen for this environment and poor soil is longish and soft now, hopefully it will firm up in the future. The native areas, which is all the containment mounding and "creeks" are weeds and rocks, hopefully that is not the intended maintenance meld of those areas.
And it is still windy ... but hey, that's PA Muni in the afternoon ...
The rumpled fairway of the par 4 2nd hole, windsock gives a clue as to the wind direction.
The par 3 4th hole, 184 yards from the back tees, 140 yards from the middle, a bowl shaped green. This was a front hole location and with a helping cross wind, a challenging tee shot to get it close to the hole.
The par 3 8th (same hole/routing as the prior layout), viewed from behind the back of the green, 223 yards from the tips, 193 yards from the blues, straight downwind and the hole was cut a few paces past the fronting bunker, ZERO chance of staying on the lower tier.
The tee shot on the par 5 9th hole, the trees on the right are some of the few that remain but Forrest moved the bunkers from the right rough to centerline bunkers. This is a double wide fairway, sharing with the 1st hole, so the trees offer some deterrent from blindly blasting your tee ball right of the bunkers. If you can do so on this straight downwind hole, you have a fair shot of reaching the green in two.
The par 4 11th hole, 411 yards into the wind, wide fairway to the right and the green hooks around to the left behind the mounding.
Approach shot into the 11th hole.
The par 3 12th, 153 yards into the prevailing wind. Slightly downhill and the back shelf is lower than the front 2/3 of the green, nice hole. I can only assume that the depression area will be filled with water.
The par 3 15th hole, 143 yards downwind. The right half of the double green.
The shortish par 4 16th hole, tons of room to the left side of the fairway, but play the tee ball towards the bunker on the far right and you will have the best angle to the green. The wind is left to right and helping on this hole so you can easily end up on the native weeds.
The long approach into the par 5 18th hole. I believe that this green location is nearly the same and shape as the old 18th but the approach is from a slightly different angle. As the 10th/18th share a fairway, might be an opportunity to hit your tee shot about 40 yards right of these bunkers to shorten the hole.
