Okay, I just played a 9 Hole Round with my buddy nickolijj. There were things I liked and disliked about the course - obviously the graphics are not up to WGT's standards. Plus the greens fee. So the way I look at this:
Negatives
1) Greens fees - there's not a single person on the site that wants to pay 100 credits to play a 9 hole round; obviously we are all attracted to the "free" nature - at least to get basic play - of the site.
2) Graphics - again, as all the commentators have pointed out, they are not HD and not up to par with the normal beauty of a WGT course. The ocean, greens, and bunkers looked particularly poor, especially since I played a round at Kiawah before this.
3) The poor graphics do impact game play in one respect - the greens all appear relatively flat - even though it is not the case - and you cannot tell contours just from looking at it. Not like the other nice WGT courses.
Positives
1) It's a freakin new course! I for one am thrilled to have the potential to play a new course, after beating the other 4 into the ground. Of course I am looking forward to Congressional and Royal St. George- all of us are - but maybe it's just me, but I have been bored for months since Oakmont last year. This is a good thing.
2) The course is kind of fun - graphics aside, it was a fun track. Ridiculously easy (I shot 29 the first time through) but fun. It reminded me of Wolf Creek (I played there in real life), sort of. Call it Wolf-Creek lite. Big elevation changes, wide fairways, long carries, etc.
Look, I completely agree that people shouldn't have to pony up even more money to play the courses, what with balls, clubs, MPC's, etc. I get that. I also get that WGT itself simply doesn't appear to have the money/resources/time to put out more than 2 courses a year. Unless we're paying a subscription fee (please no), then that's all they can do right now. Maybe that changes in the future, but for now we get a few CTTH courses and then the 2 Opens. IMO, that is a very nice deal. Those are completely free. After this year, we'll have 6 full stroke play courses to choose from, and 2 more to look forward to next year. I'm excited about that.
But for those people who play more than they should (like me), I appreciate having the option to play something different, even if it's half of what the normal WGT experience is. Maybe Truegolf improves over time - who knows? I just view it as a sideline to the main site. If you don't want to play those courses, you don't have to. And maybe in the future they'll shed the "greens fees" if revenues increase, I don't know. But I'm willing to give it a chance, and more courses - even those that are graphically inferior - are better than less, assuming they continue to produce at least 2 HD courses a year.
C