Since I can't get the link to work, here's the first several paragraphs:
"Course Critic
Tournament Players Club at Valencia, Valencia, Calif.
I logged onto a chat room this week, because the topic was about golf course critics: Is it fair that critics make instant judgments on course designs that architects (and many, many others) spend months, even years, creating? Is it fair that instant judgments are sometimes done without even playing the course?
We critics mostly defended our actions, arguing that our experience and expertise allow us to arrive at rapid-though-reasoned opinions, and that the nature of the beast doesn't give us the luxury of playing a dozen rounds on any given course before writing about it. (Unless you're David Owen writing about Augusta National. He managed to tear himself away from his detailed research for his wonderful book to play the course about 75 times. Or 750 times, I forget which.)
The topic posed a valid question that made me reassess my motis operandi. Yes, I sometimes pass judgment on a course without having playing it. Augusta National is a case in point. The new TPC at Valencia is another. I visited the newest link in the TPC network, located in the I-5 corridor north of the San Fernando Valley of greater Los Angeles, early one morning in August. I toured the course with project manager-turned-course superintendent Rich Brogan, then photographed most of its holes. I did not play it because I had a plane to catch. Which I know is a lousy excuse. There's always another plane.
Should I wait to write about it until I get back to play it? No, because I don't know when I'll next be back in California. Besides, by then everyone else will have written about it, and my review would be old news. So I pass judgment on TPC at Valencia (a course that was 18 years in the making) with the caveat to readers that my opinion is based on an examination of its design, but without benefit of a single round on the course."
or find it at the top of this page:
http://www.golfdigest.com/courses/