Robert,
The greens at the Red were some of the best I've seen anywhere-and I see some pretty good greens daily.
That said,they were always pretty good.
I'm not sure I'm enamored with the presentation and lengthy changes to the golf course.Sadly,I think it's merely an overreaction to the 1% who drive it long and fairly straight.The warning sign on The Black needs to be copied and placed by the first tee of the Red.
There already is a Black course-not sure they need 2.
I played in the morning in a twosome and waited every shot-5 +hours.Every ball hit in the lush, green ,wiry ,tall rough (in my case a large percentage) was potentially lost-and damn hard to move many of them.
It seems to me when we competed in the Long Island Open there in the 90's the best players always won (albeit it with lower scores).Yet the tournament was not such a stress test for working club pros and amateurs(in fact I always looked forward to enjoying competing there)-this year's
event was not a course you wanted to come into ill prepared for.There were some huge numbers shot.
For those who were prepared,it provided an excellent test.
In fact my assistant Rich Terga(who has been a student of mine since age 13)finished second.However he's fresh off 8 months on the Hooter's and South American Tour.
I can't imagine playing there as a paying customer can be any fun.
The Superintendant has done an incredible job carrying out someone's agenda-it's just that that agenda is what is making the game a lot less fun to play for the other 99%.
That said though,The Red is a great course in incredibly great condition.
Jeff-
Your points are well taken, however, I have always thought The Red was the most fun to play. For my handicap, 18 currently, Black will eat me alive if I'm a little bit off. On Red, I find there are options, and a few more avenues of play; specifically, the ability to run the ball up onto greens, the ability to play just short of greens and have a chip and putt to try to save a par.
The comments on the rough are spot-on, though. I played last weekend, Friday, after playing The Creek in the am, and I took notice of how the ball seemed to settle down in the rough. Great!
When you say "huge numbers", which holes are you speaking of? I've always felt that there really isn't out of bounds to speak of, and most of the par 4s are short enough where a drive, even if it misses the fairway by a little bit, the player still has the chance to advance the ball a certain distance, and maybe take chances with a wedge. Holes 1,9,14,15 are all examples that come to mind.
These are my experiences only, and obviously differ from player to player.