Having just returned from an extended tour of the country, I can validate that TOC is definitely the greenest course we saw in Scotland. If I get a chance in the next couple of days leading up to the tournament I will try to post some pictures as examples. Having been to Augusta and Bethpage for the US Open I was shocked how similar the conditioning was... they really were close. The whole 1/18 area was like a carpet. Sprinklers were running on TOC during our rounds on the New and Jubilee. The New could not have been any more different, greens were getting very thin and balls were running like crazy. Which of course was a lot of fun.
Carnoustie was more what I would have expected TOC to look like, solid conditioning but not quite as made for HDTV. My caddy there told me they deliberately thinned out the rough a few weeks back as the Seniors are going to play it over 7000 yards and wanted to prevent a complete embarrassment of the players. And the rough was still healthy...
North Berwick was truly Scottish conditioning at its best - like concrete.
The weather over there has actually been very hospitable for golf this year - cold and wet for grass growing early in the year and then turned unseasonably warm and dry just about 3-4 weeks ago. So we saw lots of thick rough (especially in Aberdeen and Dornoch) and firm and fast, yet still relatively green and consistent.
The bright side in all of this were if the pattern holds, winds were averaging about 20+ with the back nine playing into the prevailing wind. The 17th at 495 is going to be an absolute terror if that holds, it is a pronounced dogleg from the new back tee.