Criticizing your home track on this website is a bit like airing grievances with a recalcitrant wife in the local newspaper, but I've got to echo Joel's sentiments here. Trying to get our movie in the can made it impossible to see the new work out there (I played 5 holes two months ago before being called away) until Wednesday, when architectural Sensei and I pulled out the microscope and went around it.
The Ocean Course has always been an emotional issue to me - far more than the Lake - because so much of my childhood was spent on its fairways. The beauty of the course used to be that every club in the bag got used over 18 holes; it had a sparkling charm to its quirks and even after we lost the three holes across the highway (1982), a run around the Ocean remained (to me) like a three hour meditation in a familiar, comfortable chair.
The first major redo - with six holes (only four built) across the highway - did not last long. Aside from the views, three of the four actually constructed were marginal and did not really flow. Some of this was thoughtless tee placement, but the strategic arrangements looked forced and jammed together. The two that were only partially built were stopped by a radical Coastal Commission official who tried to link a bylaw change regarding "sexual orientation" to obtaining our permits - those holes were partially across a jurisdictional line.
Next, Weiskopf and John Fleming (our longtime Super) put together a complete redo - the results were mixed, although the John Fleming contributions were far more interesting that what Weiskopf planned. The project was beset with disagreements and Weiskopf (he and Morrish had split) and the club parted ways towards the end of construction.
After a conga-line of designers were interviewed, Bill Love was chosen - I think because of his long friendship with our current Superintendent Pat Finlen. Between lengthening the driving range and fixing the 14th hole for the 4th time, Love got pretty well entrenched as Olympic's go-to architect instead of, oh, say Mike DeVries or Neal or Todd Eckenrode or Gil Hanse or Robin Nelson or John Harbottle. Enough said on that subject. The Lake Course work cannot be laid at Bill Love's feet - the odor was pure USGA.
So what we have is yet another complete makeover - primarily because nobody heeded the words of Dr. Mackenzie on the subject of "economy by finality." The club has a long history of rudderless tinkering of the Ocean Course; for almost a decade, a former green chairman was allowed to treat it as his personal architectural cadaver on which to inflict clumsy ideas - all of which had to be untangled by a "real" architect. An ungodly amount of money has been spent, some necessary, but most of it a complete waste.
What do I think of the most recent version? Not so much. The nuts and bolts of drainage are reasonably well done, but there is nothing inspiring about it. Almost as if he tried to build a perfectly straightforward golf course in Scottsdale and then plug in the bunkering schematic onto our Ocean Course. It looks like it was drawn up on a drafting table and simply handed over to a construction crew because the individual elements don't seamlessly blend into an organized expression. Every green complex looks like a collection of parts - arranged as ill-fitting puzzle pieces simply glued together.
John Fleming warned years ago against putting a series of ugly drains at the bottom of every swale because most of the golf course is built on porous soil - well, that is what happens when you hire a guy from the clay and mud on the East Coast. The Ocean Course could have been another County Down, with rough edged bunkers, sand dunes and all sorts of clever humps, bumps and hollows - a perfect compliment to the stern, objective test on the other side of Humphrey Drive.
But hey, it is what it is. I'm 53, so I guess the rest of my good years are going to be spent either learning to live with it or not. Ran would call it a lost opportunity, but when something is that close to your heart, it is far more painful.