I played Barona on 6/1 with a 8:30am tee time. Excellent conditions all around. Fairways were firm and fast but gave a beautiful lie, and seemed fully healed from the verticut a few weeks ago. Greens were receptive but fairly fast. Everything else was just right. Great layout in great shape!

Played North on 6/4 in the morning. See my review for 6/5 on the a South course as conditions are very similar. The North greens aren't quite as healed as the South from the recent aeration and are a little slower, but they still ran nice and true. Overall course conditions are excellent: great tee boxes, firm yet lush fairways, rough at just the right height, good traps, and fairly quick pace of play (just over 4 hours). Both Torrey courses don't get much better than this!

Played South on 6/5 in the morning. The course and facility weren't very busy, and we saw a lot of twosomes and threesomes on the course. Pace was excellent, and we finished right at 4 hours.

The course condition is about as good as I've ever seen it. Tee boxes and fairways are in excellent shape, the bunkers well kept with good constancy sand, and the greens rolled very nicely, with medium-fast speed. A couple greens still showed a little waffle pattern from the recent aeration, but still putted true. The rough is just right now at Torrey - the tee-to-green rough is short enough that you find your ball fairly easily, but long enough to make hitting out of it a bit of a challenge, and the green side rough is fairly thick and challenging. Just the way good rough should be!

Overall, conditions and pace are excellent, and Torrey is offering up a great and challenging experience.

Played 5/29 at about 8:45am tee time. Greens are the best I've seen at the Vineyard - medium speed but very receptive to approach shots, very true roll, nice looking without bare or brown patches. Fairways were kind of spotty, with some bare spots and very thin lies. Bunkers were ok, except for a lot of unraked spots from inconsiderate players.

Pace of play was poor at over 5 hours, which is unreasonable on a weekday. The starter had sent out a 5some a couples group in front, all of them quite elderly and several walking. In fairness hey did move reasonably well for a 5some, but no matter how quick they move a 5some is going to jam up the course behind them. Unacceptable for a course to do that, especially a morning time which will have ripple impacts the rest of the day.

From my round 5/9:

Tee boxes - Generally good. No bare patches and moderate amounts of repaired divots, but the grass was inconsistently shaggy in patches.
Fairways - Fair shape but inconsistent. Lots of little tufts of grass scattered among very thin patches of thin grass. Lies were inconsistent, sometimes thin and sometimes too fluffy for a fairway.
Bunkers - Mostly good. One was pretty crunchy and crusty, but others seemed fairly consistent and were well maintained.
Greens - Inconsistent speeds from green to green and some bumpiness. They still haven't healed adequately from the recent aeration.
Pace of play - excellent, just a tick under 4 hours playing as a foursome.

Golf Club of California is generally a good track, but it does seem to keep slowly sliding downhill and feels more like a muni each time I play it. One can tell the maintenance budget much just keep getting squeezed more and more as they struggle to come back from near closure.

Played Saturday 4/19 with tee time around 9am. Fair shape overall, with some pretty chewed up tee boxes and average greens that were bumpy in spots. Pace of play was atrocious, at just under 5:30 to finish. Terrible! The front nine isn't real slow, but when you make the turn and find 3 groups waiting on the 10th tee you know the back is going to be miserable. No course Marshall's in sight to help the pace.

The course design is pretty peculiar, with a few good holes, a bunch of "meh" holes, and a few that you wonder what were they thinking? Pretty poor golf architecture.

With the strange layout, horribly slow pace, and a fairly pricey cost of about $100, this is an easy course to skip.

Played 4/12 on a delightful day. Tee boxes are in excellent shape, and fairways were firm and running out nicely but still gave a very nice lie. I was only in a bunker once, but the sand was just right and all of them looked well maintained. The rough was pretty lush but fairly short, so hitting out of it wasn't much of a penalty. The native grass areas, however, are growing up fairly long and with some pretty thick vegetation, so balls hit into there are more than likely lost; usually those areas are cut down a bit more and thinned out, so finding a ball was usually possible, but much tougher now. Greens had been aerated a few weeks ago and showed signs of the plug holes and sand; they rolled pretty true but were a bit slower than the norm for this course. Not slow, just slower than the usual Barona quick greens. Pace of play was outstanding at under 3 and 1/2 hours on a Saturday morning.

Played on Tuesday 10/8. The course is OK - not great, not bad. The layout seems kind of constricted in many spots, but it generally offers holes that don't look alike and there are a few that are really nice.

Greens were fairly bumpy and medium speed, but puts held their line reasonably well. The bunkers were inconsistent - one I was in was a skiff of sand over clay, one was a heavy mix of dirt & sand, and one was just right with good sand. Fairways were in good shape and gave a nice lie. The rough had a lot of bare patches interspersed with grass tufts.

Pace of play was pretty poor, especially considering it was a weekday. Overall the round was 5:30, with almost 3 hours just for the front nine. We never saw a marshal on the course and couldn't see any particular offending group ahead of us - it just seemed very slow.

Played Oak Glen as a single on Friday 8/23 and was rewarded with something bizarre in Southern California: a 2 hour round on a decent course! It was like a private course that day, and I didn't encounter a single other group on the front nine. I finally caught a 3some on #12 who promptly waved me through, and then finally caught another 2some on #18. 2 hours and 5 minutes from start to finish. Amazing!

The course was in good shape all around. The tee boxes were fine, fairways were mostly green with only a few brownish areas, and the greens were in pretty good shape, although every green had at least a couple large unfixed pitch marks (so prominent there is no way the person who made them could have missed them). Oak Glen isn't real challenging but there are a a number of good holes that require good shotmaking to score well, and the layout is pleasantly routed through the trees. Overall it is a decent course, and when it plays at this pace it becomes outstanding!

Played 8/14 in the morning in comfortably cool weather under the usual marine layer. Although the coastline was kind of socked in, a highlight was watching a very large pod of dolphins in close to the coast moving south in the very calm ocean. Lovely!

The course is in very good condition, with green, consistent fairways (with only a few brown or bare spots), good greens that were medium quick but rolled fairly true, and the usual tough rough that was cut down enough to easily find your ball but still difficult to hit out of. Bunkers were excellent - well raked and kind of fluffy firm or firmly fluffy, i.e. you'd get a good lie and it was easy to get that satisfying "thump" when hitting behind the ball. Pace was very good too, and about 4H 20M.

Played on 7-16-2013, walking on as a single about 9am. It is a short exec course with mostly par 3 holes, so don't expect this to be a deeply challenging golf experience. But it is great for a fairly quick round and some good iron and putting practice.

The course is in very nice condition. Tee boxes are OK but a bit chewed up as seems many players don't use the convenient divot mix. Fairways were nice a green, and although there are only a few par 4 holes (so one isn't in a fairway much here) the lies were very nice. Rough is fairly thick and lush. Greens are really excellent: very receptive to approach shots, are fairly fast, and roll very true. They really are some of the better greens in the county.

Played 6/16 on a beautiful day as a single. My tee time through GolfNow was for 9:50am but the starter said I could go out whenever I wanted. After my warm up he suggested I go off on 10 first since he had sent out a foursome on the front about 15 minutes before and I'd pretty much have the course to myself. He was right - I did catch up to a twosome after 4 holes but was able to pass them at the turn and the second nine was wide open until I caught another twosome with only two holes left to play. Overall, I played in a little under 3 hours.

Conditions overall were very good. Tee boxes were lush and level. Fairways were pretty good, with very few brownish spots. The rough was penal but fair. Greens were very good - not super fast but very true. Bunkers were very nice, with well-raked fluffy sand.

I really like the layout at Ojai. It isn't overly difficult and is a friendly design for higher handicappers, but it still challenges the better player who is trying to score low. The setting is gorgeous, the staff is very friendly and accommodating, and there are great deals to be found on green fees.