I haven't played La Costa since the redo, but I didn't think it was a particularly great piece of land for golf before.
I like the Grayhawk courses, even though I feel like Fazio gets/got great pieces of land and high budgets to build with and produced courses that were pretty "formulaic" to me. A driveable par 4, one par 5 you can reach in 2, one you cannot, par 3s will all run in a different direction, cannot see thee cart path from anywhere on the hole. Most would call all those good things, but I feel like Fazio makes them very predictable. I do commend them on the fact they do not build "stupid" greens.
Off topic, sorry.