“I love it. It’s a good layout. But I think some of the greens are a little severe for the shots we’re hitting.”

Kevin Robbins' blog post on the early concerns about the difficulty of Greg Norman and Sergio Garcia's (LOL) co-design of the new tour stop at TPC San Antonio should make Thursday's first round worth watching.

What I did gather is this: The 7,435-yard course is too hemmed by native areas to play at its full length. In a torrid wind (see: today), holes such as the 213-yard No. 3 (all carry over water), the narrow 481-yard No. 4, the 447-yard No. 10 (to a plateau green) and the 241-yard (enough said) No. 13 are just too much. And the greens? I spent a good hour with a caddie I’ve known for a while. He played Division I college golf. He’s played the mini tours. He was not impressed with Greg Norman’s multi-level, elevated greens at TPC San Antonio, which are running about 10 on the Stimp because anything faster would eliminate too many positions. “Stupid,” the caddie called them.

Now let’s be fair. Omar Uresti, the Austin resident and former Longhorn, had lots of praise for the Oaks, which he’s played three times.

“It’s hard,” Uresti said. “I love it. It’s a good layout. But I think some of the greens are a little severe for the shots we’re hitting.”

Now, we hear this quite often at courses the players haven't seen, especially at majors. It'll be the hardest course we've ever seen, etc... and the first round lead is 65.

But Norman does have the distinction of building a course that was too difficult and never opened, so it is possible that he's built something the players will be justified in hating.