Hi Tom ..hope all is well , I don't rank courses but know when one is really good, and Bayonne is . It reminds me most of Sand Hills given the elevation changes and bold features, and probably is more vertical given the size difference of the sites. Having built something similar, though not near as good, it is easy to relate to how much work was done here.
But we know its the greens that typically put a golf course inot the "special" category....and just playing them once I was really impressed.....I play pretty fast so took as much time as possible to walk all around the surfaces , hit a couple practice putts on particlularly gnarly spots and really had some fun trying to figure them out. I liked that you could kill them into the hills..a necesary practice on really tough ones to help control your speed on long lags...which are easy to get here
Just one snippet of the round ...#16 is a downhill par four that requires a decision on the tee shot ....driiver ..three wood ...rescue???
We were down wind ...making the second shot really challenging ( front pin) wo you really needed to challenge the fairway bunkers wiht your tee shot to get a short wedge in your hand for the second shot....and yhou needed to spin it to keep from releasing all the way to the back of the green ......really really challenging hole wihout being a 480 uphill par four...thats one thing I liked so much..
Honestly thinking as to any real weknessesin the layout I'm not finding any ...too hard
it looks like you could get it going and go low....too long and boring ...certainly not .....nice mix of four pars ..five pars and threes .....the threes played pretty easy wiht the exception of # 14 but they were a fine set of holes ....the dunes are tied in really well , lots of integration with fairway , bunkers et al and the grassing plan captured the links look
and feel ...the ball moves ...is there a decent amount of aerial golf ...yes ...too much for some?
.....I can't say yet but if there is does it disqualify the course ....not for me and I'm almost a senior golfer ( oh my ) can't wait to go back and see it again