Sorry for the re-post, but here's what I wrote back in 2010. I haven't been back since, unfortunately, but do think these comments still likely hold true, IMHO.
Tobacco Road is possibly the most original, artistic, and creative golf course built in the past 30 years, and for style points alone Tobacco Road gets all 10's.
I've struggled more in my mind with how to accurately critiqueTobacco Road than any course I've ever played, simply because it is that good and original in concept, with bold architectural statements and death-defying visuals that may be the most anxiety-producing in the game.
But, somewhat sadly, it may also be where the "return to classic" values movement of the past fifteen years and the rugged look inherent with that genre actually "jumped the shark" and began to become a caricature of itself.
I say that because as stunningly exhilerating as the course looks, large portions of it don't work well at all for golf. The bold sculpting of the land creates bowls in many spots that 1) don't drain well at all despite the obvious catchbasins, and 2) collect every ball within a large radius to the same divot-filled mucky pocket. For a course built within the sandhills of NC, Strantz's mass shaping seems to have interrupted the natural drainage patterns of the land enough that sheet-drainage to a large extent fails to take place. Instead, water flows down from the top of slopes natural and man made into bowls that stay soggy all the time, such as through the narrow gap between the mounds on the very first hole, or the two bowls that make up the entire fairway of the 16th hole.
Many of the bunkers have been built with such freakishly steep fronting slopes that they are seemingly permanently filled with rivulets from washouts and have to require constant maintenance attention. The bunkers themselves are so extensively pervasive that in many cases they become preferred landing zones for better players with their hardpacked sand, a surface that provides little challenge for top golfers yet gives hackers fits.
Other faults include the number of lengthy forced carries dictated by the design choices. For a weaker player, the course would be a nightmare, even played at the 5880 yard tees. Despite the width of many holes, lost ball locations loom large throughout.
In a way, it is a study in "maximalism", where almost every hole is lacking restraint in terms of man-made features juxtaposed with natural attributes. I suspect the ground pre-construction was good enough to have yielded something perhaps with perhaps less visual histrionics and more excellent golf.
At some point over the past twenty years, golf has become less a sporting endeavor and more "entertainment", and certainly as an architect, Mike Strantz was a Master Showman who will be missed and whose best work will live on and even be studied to understand where he effectively stretched the envelope beyond the common and mundane of the art.
However, on what might have been his greatest canvas, I can't help but feel that style took precedence over substance, and his lack of restraint on an already challenging, rugged site has created a course that is wonderful to look at, but one in which I can't imagine much enjoying repeated plays, even given the horizontal flexibility that Strantz admittedly built in.
This is a course that seemingly had the potential to be a Top 20 Modern with a little more attention to fundamental details and a bit more discipline in execution. Instead of being another Kingsley Club, it is closer to something Desmond Muirhead might have delivered on his wackiest day.