I played an afternoon round here on 04/15/12 from the Black tees (6354/70.9/135) and wish that I would have played the tips just for the experience. That aside, the Black tees kept is challenging due to the high slope. I have played maybe a half dozen Johnny Miller designs and I only like one or two as most are just to quirky and difficult. This is a tolerable design from Miller because about half of the holes play in the flat meadow while the other half are in the hills. The first six holes play in the meadow, holes 7 thru 9 wind up into the hills, the 10th thru 12th are in meadow, and then closing holes are in the hills again. So as far routing the holes go, it is as even as it is going to get and I am glad Miller did not design a traditional “Hill” nine and a “Valley” nine.

There are some big elevation changes so that made some holes play a lot longer or a lot shorter. It was difficult playing here the first time when trying to pick a line off some of the tees and determine the distances to lay it up on the short holes. The 15th comes to mind as I hit a good drive down the right side and was almost blocked out as the hole moves hard right on the approach. The greens had wicked slopes and the 13th green climbed maybe 10 feet from front to back. There I started a putt almost 90 degrees left of the cup.

The course still has some stupid Miller design features. If you have to lay up on the 14th then it needs to be played up into the hard pan on the hill and left it feed down off of that back into the fairway. A layup landing in the fairway will scare the out of bounds left due to the slope. The 16th, a par 5, gives very little room to lay up for a 100 yard approach.

The views from the 7th to the 9th are impressive and something that most courses don’t have. However, even with the enjoyable things about the course I would be hard pressed to recommend it. I think it is just too tough for the average golfer and the course wants an outrageous amount of money to play here. I found a time on Golfhub.com for ~$40 and for that price its worth a play. However, the course website wants $75 for a twilight time. The laughs keep coming when they want $120 on a weekend morning. The course was nicely conditioned, drained well, and the greens rolled good but if I am dropping that kind of coin for a round in the Bay Area I am heading over to Wente Vineyards.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):