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Hickory Know is a good course. It has a variety of holes that range in difficulty from easy to very hard. I have 2 bones to pick with Hickory Knob: 1) when I was there this past week, the greens had been worked on and were not in good shape. They were bare in some places and very bumpy in others. 2) No. 4 requires an uphill drive and then a downhill approach to a green requiring a forced carry. The fairway is mown so tightly that a drive that gets to the downhill slope with any velocity will not stop short of the pond. Bad design and maintenance.

I played Hunters Creek about a month ago and thought that the new ownership had turned the corner on improving the condition of the course. I was disappointed, however, to see clover in the fairways, longish grass in some of the fairways, and uneven greens (some of them had both extremely bumpy places and skinned places on them). This course could be excellent; it's a good layout with a good variety of holes. I hope to see improvement in conditions.

The course was very busy the day I played. In spite of the fact that they were very busy, the staff was friendly and helpful. The fairways were dry because of the drought, but in better shape than I expected. The greens rolled true -- if you hit a good putt, it had every chance of going in. The course is a good balance of difficult holes and scoring holes.
2 minor caveats -- 1) the snack bar was overwhelmed by the crowd -- took a while and 2) I had a little trouble finding a level spot on a couple of tee boxes. Moved around a little and found a suitable spot.