Bump. I'm late to the party. Here's my experience:
When I was a boy, my (Scottish) grandfather cut down some golf clubs for me as presents, and I hit plastic balls around the backyard. I didn't start playing real golf until I was about 21 years old. I spent most of my childhood playing basketball and other sports, and I also had a keen interest in the statistics of baseball. I played table baseball and other sports games, including a couple of golf games. One I remember was called "Thinking Man's Golf". These golf games featured hole diagrams, and you laid out a template over the diagram where you intended to hit your shot. This is where the seed was planted for golf hole designs. I even spent a few hours drawing golf holes on pieces of paper.
Moving forward to my early twenties, my interest in experiencing beautiful playing fields was immediate. Within a year of beginning the game in earnest, my father and I drove up to British Columbia and back, playing several courses along the way. In the summer of 1980, much of the Pacific Northwest was covered in volcanic sand after the Mt St. Helens eruption. I've always been fascinated by the great playing fields of the game. Seeing my interest in the game grow, Dad joined the local university course (a nice perq for a staff member) and resumed his golfing life after a 25 year hiatus. The Stanford University course established many of my early thoughts about golf. Back then, it was quite a wide course, with flat, relatively uncomplicated fairway contours, and greens that featured moderately difficult short game play. Most of all, Stanford features a beautiful walk through the back of the university campus, hilly enough to keep an aging member in good shape, and featuring native live and valley oaks, and a wide variety of birds and other wildlife.
When John VanderBorght nominated me for membership into Golf Club Atlas in 2004, I didn't realize how much it would change my golfing life. By then, I had moved to Oregon and was playing at my own home club. GCA gave me a chance to participate in discussions about golf courses, and to read the thoughts of other like-minded enthusiasts. My experience can be distilled into two phases:
1. Adopt the collective conventional wisdom as presented on GCA.
2. Gradually develop and establish strong personal opinions that draw upon the conventional wisdom.
I believe a new student of any discipline is inclined to respect and adopt the thoughts and beliefs of the experts. In my case, I spent the early years as a GCA member embracing minimalism, plus "quirky" golf hole design, and severe green complexes with lots of internal contouring. As the years have flown by, my tastes have moderated somewhat, back to a bit gentler style of golf, and based on the types of golf shots I like best. In many ways, my tastes gave reverted to the golf played at Stanford back in the eighties. At the core of my philosophy is that golf is best played in a beautiful natural setting with abundant wildlife, and that the walk should be challenging and invigorating.
I've seen this pattern with many new enthusiastic GCA members, enthusiastically embracing quirkiness, minimalism and other core tenets of GCA, then gradually moderate and individualize their thoughts over time. It's fun to watch.
As long as the new GCA member has the means to travel, and is reasonably kind and respectful, he/she is likely to have opportunities to develop lifelong friendships, and see a variety of excellent golf courses, furthering his/her personal education. I am grateful for those invitations and friendships.
I expect my tastes will continue to moderate as I age. I recently played Pasatiempo a couple of times, and it remains an ideal choice, despite the unusual nature of the short game play. The moderate climate and challenging walk are just about perfect. The 2nd hole at Stanford, or Ballyneal, or perhaps Riviera, are the specific type of golf hole that thrills me. A tee shot that allows the player to swing without undue fear of disaster, followed by a long approach shot to a reasonably large green, that sets up the possible long birdie putt over gently contoured land with moderate and predictable break. That's what I really like these days. That's not to diminish the intrigue of the short iron shot requiring great precision, or the tee shot where favoring one side of the fairway is merited. After all this study, I am keenly aware of my biases and my preferences.