Scoring well demands accuracy and patience off the tee. Before you take your first swing you can do yourself a great favor for the rest of the day by selecting the appropriate tees. You have several choices in between. The longer you make the course, the more important the tee shot becomes. The fairways are wide and well defined and there is rarely a question of where to drive the ball, so it becomes a matter of execution.
Trouble resides off the fairway, with water one way and severe contouring the other.
My advice, particularly playing the course for the first time, is to take the architect's hints and be in the fairway at all costs. Of course you can ignore this advice and play your own game, possibly cutting off chunks of yardage, but you bring into play all sort of trouble. Going out you'll play nine holes that are clean and sculpted. These are beautiful and dangerous holes, inviting and forbidding at the same moment. The first hole is a composite of the front nine.