A little about the courses perhaps? I'll at least offer some of my perspective...
The Links at Paso Robles is not quite a hidden gem, but it certainly offered a fun enough experience. I played like absolute dog crap on that first round, so it gave me an opportunity to see and realize the potential. There's some land surrounding the course itself (especially off the 9th holes left) that appears to offer a lot of interesting movement. As it stands though, your basic course with not much GCA to speak about. Really good green to tee transitions though. You can run your ball here for sure.
San Luis Obispo CC was certainly a highlight. Some good to very good holes here, but nothing great in my mind. Good conditions. Greens were a little blah to me and you definitely need to stay below the hole. I think the work from Neal and his crew definitely helps the course. The bunkering seems to work pretty well and is player friendly while providing a good challenge. Some added ground features were quite fun as well. Good use of short grass on the surrounds for the bump and run game. Green to tee transitions were solid. On the negative side, you have a botanical garden here (yet I heard many trees had been removed!) and some rather poor use of water / ponds (I think I barfed on the 9th). Also, some mounding just didn't seem to work for me. But overall, pretty solid track. Some memorable holes for me were the 3rd (kick plate left works!), 11th and 15th.
Dairy Creek was unfortunately not my cup of tea for the most part. It's probably not John Harbottle's best design and I'm going to guess his team was faced with tremendous environmental constaints. As a result, the course feels very much forced into the landscape in my opinion. Again and again, it's up and down the various hills while avoiding certain sensitive areas. Quite the walk actually. While the conditioning was pretty good, I felt the mow lines and short grass could have been expanded and even tightened, but perhaps that's a real challenge for the crew here ... not sure. Shaping wise, I felt there was just too much superfluous moundus interruptus that simply did not blend all that well into the landscape. I think the best thing here for me was the open feel, views, and perhaps the greens (although we could not tell from the sanding / punching).
Morro Bay was actually quite the surprise. Nothing great, but just a solid muni. A lot of uphill and downhill here too, but some interesting green approaches with ground features into those greens that worked in many instances. Good poa greens that seemed to fit into the landscape (12th pin placement kicked our asses). Overall though a little repetitive in some areas. For instance, I hit a lot of 3is off the tee on a stretch of holes that weren't too dissimilar. The bermuda / kukuyu here is rather unfortunate as well, but it probably offers the course a certain amount of natural defense. Mow lines here need some help. Routing wise, I also felt a few of the holes going into the sunset was not optimal. But for $30 ... how can anyone complain...
I had played Monarch Dunes previously when it first opened and even back then I played it in a 4-5 club wind ... which is just silly. I think we had a 3-4 club wind this time around. I had forgotten a lot about this course. Upon this go around, I think I appreciated the course more. I think it's a valiant effort and has some interesting ideas going on with some rather worthy holes. It does feel "linksy" in nature and I think would probably remind someone of Whistling ... but only a little. One can definitely play a running game here and I attempted many such shorts on my approaches with decent success. Greens were rather firm, but played somewhat slow from what I would have expected. Then again ... my putting sucks. Some pretty interesting greens on a few holes (8th was memorable for instance). Reasonable use of blindness on some areas as well. On the negative side, I have no problem in saying the waterworks here are a complete mess. In particular, the monster pond shared between the 8th and 15th ... to use a JS expression ... is a complete "abortion". This pond single-handedly ruins to an extent not one but two holes (8th and 15th). Fortunately, the greens to these same holes make up for a lot and I really found the 8th green quite interesting. The 15th green was interesting as well. Likewise, the ubiquitous water / fountain hole in the 18th is just awful to the eye. Again though, the 18th green makes up for a lot of this. Cart pathing has some issues on some stretches (16th is awful and would be better served by sharing with the 15th hole in my opinion). Green to tee is a little weak, but to be expected for a neighborhood track I'd say. Finally, the gum / euk trees are a real mess. Several tee shots offered "goal post" situations that were simply uncalled for (3rd or 11th for example). Elsewhere they would be used to frame holes (notably the par 3 17th) or block options (16th fairway right with blind approach to the green). Last but not least, for whatever reason ... the nines were switched and all I can say to this is why? I'd much rather start off NOT playing the current 1st (old 10th), but that's just me. So a mixed bag in the end, but an entertaining one I'd say. Holes I liked were the 1st, 2nd (kick plate right and green are cool), 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 12th, and 14th. A lot of good par 3s I felt. Weaker par 5s (although 3rd is pretty good).