In Matthew Mollica's thread on Lost Farm (Pictorial), he was kind enough to post some photos of what appears to be an amazing new golf course at Lost Farm. In doing so, he went on to state that he was aiming not to spoil the mystique of each person's first visit to Lost Farm, which was the prompt for this thread.
At the outset, let me say thanks to Matthew for posting these photos for all of our enjoyment. That said, I'd be interested to know what some of you feel is the best way to approach your first visit to a highly anticipated course. Do you like to see as many photos and read as much is possible about the course, or do you like to go in "blind" so you form your own impressions and have a bit of a wow factor when stepping up to the tee on a new and amazing hole?
I know that, personally, I prefer the latter approach, as on a number of occasions I have studied a course online before playing it for the first time, only to feel slightly let down when I actually played the course. That said, I rarely have the willpower to pass over these threads with photos of new courses, like Lost Farm, as they are so compelling.
I always ran into the same issue when growing up with new album (yes, I'm old) releases from my favorite rock bands. While I enjoyed hearing the pre-release of a track or two on the radio, there was something special about buying a great album, sound unheard, from one of your favorite bands, and taking it home for a listen on your stereo. I still remember the day when I bought Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedoes, without having heard any of the tracks on the radio, and just about wore out the vinyl the first day playing it over and over. It absolutely blew me away (and still does to this day), and I think part of the reason why is that I had not heard sneak previews of any of the songs on the album.
I'm not at all suggesting that people stop posting these photos, as I think they are of great value, I'm just curious as to what approach others prefer when visiting a course of potentially significant GCA interest for the first time.