In Volume 3 of The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, Tom Doak published that:

“Any new course on the Peninsula is a big deal, but as home to the Northern California Golf Association, Poppy Hills was highly over-hyped. It fell into the rotation for the annual Tour event for a few years, after Cypress Point bailed out, but the pros shed no tears when MPCC took its place. It’s a good routing over a fairly difficult hilly site, but the original set of huge, multi-tiered greens was a poor choice, leading to very slow rounds. It has recently been totally redone and the greens are more conventional now; our ratings date to the original course.”

Poppy Hills received a score of 4 out of 10 from Tom Doak, and a score of 3 out of 10 from one of his co-authors.