With no master plan, Coore and Crenshaw are free to design the best golf holes without worrying about housing.
The team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, one of the premium firms in golf course architecture, have signed on to design a new 18-hole course at Palmetto Bluff in South Carolina.
Owned by developer and course operator South Street Partners, the private Palmetto Bluff is already home to an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus course named May River that is ranked by Golfweek’s Best as tied for No. 171 among all modern courses in the United States. Palmetto Bluff also recently opened Crossroads, a nine-hole short course designed by the team of Tad King and Rob Collins.
For the newest 18, Coore and Crenshaw were given free run of 500 Lowcountry acres to choose the best spots for golf holes without worrying about where houses might fit, South Street said in a media release announcing the course. The course will anchor what is to become Palmetto Bluff’s third village, to be named Anson. The layout, yet unnamed, will play through four types of forest with coastal and wetland views.
The new course, located on the east end of Palmetto Bluff, is slated to open in the winter of 2025-2026 with a temporary clubhouse. A later Phase 2 will include a full clubhouse
Stick another pin in the global map for Cabot, the Canadian-based golf resort operator that in recent years has expanded to properties in Scotland, the Caribbean, the U.S. and soon to western Canada.
This week, Cabot co-founder and CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar will announce the company’s expansion to France with the purchase of Golf Du Médoc Resort in Bordeaux. The resort, home to two golf courses designed by Bill Coore and Rod Whitman, will be rebranded Cabot Bordeaux.
Those course designers’ names are extremely familiar to Cowan-Dewar, who employed Whitman then the team of Coore and Ben Crenshaw to build the 36 holes at Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. It was there the company got the off the ground with the introduction of Cabot Links in 2012 and Cabot Cliffs in 2015. Both those courses have achieved high acclaim with rankings among the best courses in the world – Cliffs is No. 11 on Golfweek’s Best ranking of courses outside the U.S., and Links ties for No. 43.
The Rod Whitman-designed Vignes Course at Golf Du Médoc Resort in France, which will be rebranded as Cabot Bordeaux (Courtesy of Cabot)
Cabot Cape Breton was not the first example of Whitman and Coore design layouts at the same site, however. Before partnering with Crenshaw, Coore opened the Chateaux (Castle) Course in 1989 at Golf Du Médoc Resort. Whitman’s Vignes (Vines) Course followed in 1991.
“Both courses are just really, really wonderful golf,” Cowan-Dewar said. “It’s just a beautiful, idyllic setting. …
“The courses are really quite even, so we’re pretty excited about that. People will debate, as they do in Cape Breton, over which is their favorite course. And that’s a mighty good problem for us. There’s nothing better than people finishing their trip and trying to decide which one they liked better when there is no obvious choice.”
The Bill Coore-designed Chateau Course at Golf Du Médoc Resort in France, which will be rebranded as Cabot Bordeaux (Courtesy of Cabot)
The resort sits less than a half hour’s drive northwest of Bordeaux, considered the wine capital of the world and around which live some 1.4 million people. Not far inland from the Bay of Biscay, Bordeaux is some 320 miles south of Paris.
Cowan-Dewar said he had traveled to France several times but never the Bordeaux region until visiting Golf Du Médoc Resort last year. It was the golf that caught his attention.
“It’s entirely site specific,” he said when asked about the move into France. “I’ve long heard about it, and Rod and Bill would talk about it a fair bit. So you think how small a world it is, this is the only place in the world they worked side by side before Cabot. And with 36 holes of Ben and Rod’s work, it just seemed a little like fate, right?”
The hotel at Golf Du Médoc Resort in France, which will be rebranded as Cabot Bordeaux (Courtesy of Cabot)
Cowan-Dewar explained that Golf Du Médoc Resort was founded by two French titans of industry, one of whom has passed away. The other turns 90 years old this year and is still friends with Coore and Whitman. The opportunity to take the reins at such a property was too great to pass up, Cowan-Dewar said.
“As you can imagine, with Bill and Rod the golf architecture was terrific, as was the entire destination,” he said. “I think the city, the destination and the region were all amazing.”
Cabot Bordeaux will include a preexisting 79-room hotel, an upscale restaurant showcasing regional cuisine and a world-class spa. Cowan-Dewar said additions to the 400-acre property might include the two- and four-bedroom style of cabins and cottages that have proved popular at other Cabot properties. The hotel was built in 2007 and was recently updated, and Cabot will undertake various projects to ensure the property remains fresh with updated location-specific activities and expanded amenities.
The spa pool at Golf Du Médoc Resort in France, which will be rebranded as Cabot Bordeaux (Courtesy of Cabot)
The courses will receive polishing as Cabot takes its cues from Coore and Whitman, with the work most likely focused on the typical updates needed for drainage and playing surfaces at any 35-year-old courses. The resort also has two driving ranges, one of which includes the Bernard Pascassio Training Center. Cowan-Dewar said one of the ranges will be converted to a par-3 course, a move that has become a staple at top resorts in recent years as players look for more golf than 18 holes a day.
“It’s almost impossible to have a property like that now without a par-3 course,” he said. “They’ve become such demand drivers that converting a driving range into a par-3 course seems like a win right off the bat.”
It’s all part of a rapid expansion for Cabot, which has gone from 36 full-size holes of golf to 90 in recent years, with another 54 on the books to open soon.
In 2022 Cabot purchased the Scottish Castle Stuart and its 18-hole links course designed by Gil Hanse and Mark Parsinen. That property was rebranded as Cabot Highlands with plans to add 18 new holes by Tom Doak next year.
The company then completed Cabot Saint Lucia’s Point Hardy Golf Club to great acclaim in 2023, including several of the most scenic golf holes in the world designed by Coore and Crenshaw on cliffs above the Atlantic Ocean.
Later in 2023 the first 18-hole course, named the Karoo and designed by Kyle Franz, opened at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida, with another 18 slated to open this year. That property is a rethink of the sandy site’s former World Woods Golf Club, and it also includes two short courses.
Also in the works is Cabot Revelstoke in western Canada, with Whitman designing the mountainous 18-hole layout there.
“It’s a little overwhelming to think about, you know, but it’s very exciting,” Cowan-Dewar said of the expansions. “It’s all driven by the golf. We have found that if we focus on great golf, the rest just follows naturally.”
In the span of three years, Cabot will have gone from a famous but regional player to a worldwide force in the golf industry, and more additions to the brand are likely. Cabot Bordeaux will certainly add a French sophistication to the company’s newfound international flavor.
“Anyone playing Cabot Bordeaux is going to enjoy a distinctly French experience,” Coore said in a media release that will be released to announce the news. “Going from Cabot Cape Breton to Cabot Highlands to Cabot Saint Lucia to Cabot Bordeaux offers experiences that are as different and as varied as you could ever imagine.”
Reaching for the putter from off the putting surface is often considered an effort of last resort for weekend hackers who can’t muster much muscle control to hit a proper chip or pitch. Just surrender to your inadequacies and grab that flat stick, so the stigma goes.
The Donald Ross-designed Pinehurst No. 2 is no ordinary Open test, and many of the shots and decisions required will be entirely different than those typically employed by tour professionals. The layout is ranked by Golfweek’s Best as the No. 1 public-access course in North Carolina, the No. 3 resort course in the U.S. and the No. 18 Classic course in the U.S.
It’s not just the chipping – or putting – onto No. 2’s notoriously domed greens. Open contestants will be met with acres of sandy scrub, where luck holds great influence on outcome. Additional wiregrass was planted in the sandscapes just off the fairways for this U.S. Open, adding even more intrigue as any ball bounds off the firm but ample fairways.
Max Homa putts up and onto the first green from the fringe during a practice round before the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina. (Katie Goodale-USA TODAY Sports)
Wayward pros might find their next shot sitting pretty atop a clear patch of sand. Or in a footprint. Or plugged at the base of an ill-willed plant. Is it fair? That’s not the point, and this week’s winner will be one of the few to withstand that kind of fair-not-fair mindset. Players need not worry about the randomness of bad lies and wiregrass that lurk away from the fairways if they keep their shots on short grass, of which there is plenty.
This will be an Open of survival. Of finding a way, regardless of convention. Of swallowing pride to ensure no worse than a bogey. An Open at Pinehurst is frequently less about great shots and more about minimizing the impact of bad swings and poor decisions, even more so since a 2011 restoration by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw took No. 2 back to its raw, sandy, bouncy roots.
In an era of big swings dominating golf, Pinehurst No. 2 puts a premium on small-ball sensibilities. Of knowing when to pitch out sideways, when to play to the front of a green, when to leave the 60-degree wedge in the bag. Martin Kaymer proved as much in winning the 2014 U.S. Open by eight shots, deftly relying on his putter from off the greens.
The resort caddies at No. 2 don’t talk much about greens hit in regulation. Instead, they laugh about “greens visited in regulation,” so common it is for balls to scatter away from the crowned putting surfaces. Great shots will find favor, as they always should. Mediocre and even seemingly good shots, however, are subject to No. 2’s audacious greenside roll-offs.
Those slopes running off the putting surfaces frequently grow steeper and the bunkers more threatening the deeper a shot is played into a green. Ross, who lived for years off No. 2’s third fairway, mentioned the smart option of playing to the front of any of these greens, then putting uphill to the hole. It’s a sound strategy that doesn’t promise many birdies. Such a tactic would require a seismic mental shift for most tour professionals keen to attack.
It’s all decidedly old school – thinner grass on the perimeters of the fairways, bad lies in unpampered sand, a little dirt in the socks and no weak-kneed emphasis on equitable outcomes. May the most deserving player win. Pinehurst is a classic destination, and this Open has the potential for a return to classic sensibilities in which the game’s governing body never believed course conditioning was meant to meet any modern definition of fair or perfect.
A golf ball rests in a nasty spot of bother with a wiregrass plant blocking its progress at Pinehurst No. 2. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
The return to a classic ethos was the focus of the restoration by Coore, who fell in love with No. 2 while still a boy. But by the end of the second U.S. Open at No. 2 in 1999, much of the Ross had been replaced. Acres of manicured grass had appeared, and increasingly precious water was blasted all about the property to keep it green. The more perfected No. 2 was much less perfect by classic standards.
“I grew up in North Carolina and I played golf at Pinehurst as a kid, and I remembered it from what it was in the 1960s, and I just knew from my own memory that it had changed dramatically through the years,” Coore said in describing the motivation for his and Crenshaw’s restoration. “Ben and I certainly never would have gone there and said you need to change this, you need to restore this. All that influence came from the Pinehurst people, who said we’ve been listening and studying that this course is not the way it used to be.”
Coore and Crenshaw wanted to put the Ross back into property. That meant sandy expanses straddling dry and bouncy fairways, with more natural bunker shapes and balls rolling endlessly across firm, tight turf. Work crews removed 40 acres of grass and reduced the number of sprinkler heads on the course from 1,200 to 450, following the still-buried original irrigation pipes as a guide. Coore and Crenshaw stretched the fairways considerably wider, but they frequently play less so because golf balls can trundle along across dry ground until they reach trouble in the waste areas.
It all made for a vastly different U.S. Open in 2014, which was the third at the course but the first after the restoration. Previous iterations had featured acres of lush rough to catch errant shots, but Kaymer won on a baked-out version of No. 2 with magnificent displays of grit from both the course and eventual champion. The USGA that year embraced the slogan “Brown is beautiful,” even if not every player, onsite spectator or TV viewer agreed. It all made for one of the most memorable Opens in recent history.
Martin Kaymer plays from a sandy waste area on No. 14 at the 2014 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina. (Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports)
The USGA has dropped much of the attention on brown conditions for this year’s Open, and the course is some three shades greener overall than in 2014. But one notable change will keep things interesting: The putting surfaces were recently converted from bent grass to Ultradwarf Bermuda, a warm-season grass that requires less water during a North Carolina summer. That means drier greens, bigger bounces and more roll-offs. The new green surfaces fit in perfectly with Coore and Crenshaw’s restoration efforts to No. 2.
“It had become a very manicured golf course … it didn’t look like a Sandhills course,” Coore said more than a year ago in the run-up to the Open. “Things had happened over the years, and the courses had evolved and all that, and we just said … we need to be true to some sort of aesthetic, the Ross aesthetic.”
Ross’s artistry will be in full effect this week, especially if the dry and hot weather forecasts prove true and the course plays to its fiery potential. No. 2 has the firepower to be the star of the show, and the players must accept that.
Even if it means humbly reaching for a putter from off the greens.
If greens are the faces of a golf course, this one at Pinehurst has crooked, sandy ears and a wicked smirk.
What will be the most difficult hole at Pinehurst No. 2 for the 2024 U.S. Open? If recent history is any indication, forget about the long par 4s.
No. 6, a par 3 that is listed as 228 yards on the USGA’s official scorecard, could easily take the top spot … again.
In the 2014 U.S. Open – the only of three previous Opens at No. 2 since the Donald Ross design was renovated by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in 2011 – the sixth played to an average of 3.374. That made it the most difficult hole in relation to par.
No. 6 surpassed No. 16 and its 4.341 average, and No. 16 is a 536-yarder that plays as a par 4 in the U.S. Open but is normally a par 5 for resort guests and members.
The next three toughest holes were No. 2 (par 4, 4.339 average), No. 8 (par 4, 4.336 average, another converted par 5) and No. 11 (par 4, 4.323 average).
In all, No. 6 gave up 12 birdies in that 2014 U.S. Open, with 270 pars, 150 bogeys, 13 double bogeys and one “other.” Martin Kaymer, who won that Open by eight shots, played the sixth in 1 over for the week, making one bogey in the third round against three other pars.
What makes No. 6 so daunting? For starters, it’s will be a long iron for most of the Open field. The green features runoffs in all directions – a Pinehurst No. 2 specialty – and the putting surface is set at an awkward angle, offset back and to the left. That makes it especially hard to hold the surface, as balls hit to the center/front portion of the green can run through if struck too firmly. Any attempt to fly the ball deeper into the green brings the bunkers even more into play.
Eventual winner Martin Kaymer blasts from a bunker on No. 6 during the second round of the 2014 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2. (Photo: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports)
Even shots that land near the center of No. 6 green but are hit with sidespin are likely to turn and find one of two deep bunkers waiting on both sides. A hump and a slope on the front of the green also wait to reject shots, frequently forcing balls to the left and into the deeper of the two bunkers.
Players who find themselves in the left bunker must blast a high shot with spin onto the putting surface. Expect to see multiple efforts fail to clear the lip after players try to shave it too close when blasting out to a short-sided pin on a green that runs away from the trap – it really is a devilish spot, even for the best players in the world. If the rains hold off and No. 2 is playing particularly firm and fast, it will be even more difficult.
Basically, it’s just a very hard hole with no real place to miss. It’s often said the greens are the faces of a golf course, and if that’s true, then No. 6 has two giant sandy, crooked ears and a wicked smirk.
Less is more as Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw replace outlandish length with a focus on playability .
It’s a case of addition by subtraction at The International in Bolton, Massachusetts, as the famed team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have replaced an emphasis on outlandish length with a much-improved golf experience on the club’s Pines Course.
Known for decades as the longest course in the U.S., the Pines opened in 1955 with a design by Geoffrey Cornish and legendary amateur Francis Ouimet. The course originally stretched to 8,040 yards, an extreme length for that time period. Nearly two decades later, architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. stretched it to 8,325 yards in a renovation.
Coore and Crenshaw have scrubbed that focus on length and difficulty in their total renovation that began in 2022. Scheduled to reopen this fall to limited member play, the private Pines is a whole new golf course. And they have removed some 1,200 yards – the combined length of three mid-sized par 4s – as the course will now play to a much more reasonable 7,103 off the back tees.
Architect Bill Coore walks the Pines course at The International in Bolton, Mass. (Courtesy of Escalante)
Not a single playing corridor or green site remains from the old layout, as Coore and Crenshaw reimagined the course to better take advantage of interesting topography and mature vegetation. Instead of length and head-banging difficulty, the Pines will now offer playability with an emphasis on natural and strategic golf holes.
“Bill, Ben, shapers Ryan Farrow and Zach Varty, and the rest of the Coore and Crenshaw team have worked their magic, taking an exceptional site and crafting what we strongly believe will be considered one of the country’s best new golf courses,” Paul Celano, director of golf at The International, said in a media release announcing the upcoming completion of the project. “Their deep admiration for courses built during the early 20th century, the so-called ‘Golden Age of Architecture,’ is an ideal match for our vision of a golf-first experience at The International that preserves and honors the club’s 120-year history.”
Another addition: The Pines will now feature fescue turf tees, fairways and rough. Besides making for amazing aesthetics in the rough, fescue provides a firm and bouncy playing surface that should highlight the strategic opportunities intended by the design team. Add in sandy waste areas carved through the pine trees, and it will be an entirely new experience for golfers versus the old layout.
The Pines is one of two layouts at The International, along with the Tom Fazio-designed Oaks course that recently received a lighter renovation by Tripp Davis. The club was purchased out of bankruptcy in 2021 by Escalante Golf, owner of golf properties in 15 states, which has invested heavily in the New England club.
Check out a selection of photos from the Pines course as the renovation nears completion.
Columnist Eamon Lynch dreams of Bandon Dunes, but there’s one hole that gives him nightmares.
(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel EditorJason Luskput together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)
The quality of sleep enjoyed by a tortured golfer is inversely proportional to the number of swing thoughts agitating the mind. Thus, on most nights my attempts at finding rest involve not counting sheep but playing golf in my mind’s eye. Almost always, those rounds are at Bandon Dunes.
It’s been over 20 years since I first visited Mike Keiser’s refuge on the Oregon coast, and the more than 100 rounds I’ve played there are among my fondest memories. Like the Solstice in 2012, four rounds in one day. The first ball was airborne (barely) at 5:35 a.m., the last putt dropped at 8:10 p.m., the first cocktail moments later. Or the time I watched with unsporting glee as a friend needed 51 putts on Old Macdonald (he was a perfect 33 through 11 until he unexpectedly two-putted the 12th). Or when I played a three-club tournament on the same course and chose my weapons badly: putter, hybrid, 7-iron. On the seventh hole, I tried the putter backward and left-handed to use the flange for a steep bunker shot. It worked, then I three-jacked on the green when using it conventionally.
But Bandon Dunes is also where apathy over swing dysfunction became apparent. Maybe a decade back, I was there with Brandel Chamblee, so already the trip was suboptimal. We were playing Bandon Trails, the Bill Coore-Ben Crenshaw design that features many holes I love and one I loathe. We reached the 14th, a 325-yarder where caddies will tell you they count many more 6s than 4s.
I’ve railed against the hole since it opened in 2005. Once, I was headed to Trails with a course architecture writer when he handed me his phone, mid-call. “Eamon, this is Bill Coore,” came a gentle drawl. “I just want to remind you, again, that No. 14 was Ben’s idea.”
On the tee with Chamblee, I sniped one left into the woods, a trend established over the previous 13 holes. Dejected, I handed the driver back to my longtime, long-suffering caddie, Shanks. “That’s my last swing,” I said.
“No, it isn’t!” Chamblee said, laughing.
“Watch me,” I replied.
I spent the remainder of the trip beating balls on the range and saw more of the milkshake lady at the Dairy Queen downtown than I did of Chamblee (so it wasn’t all bad).
It was an ominous sign of my eventual descent to total range rat, happy to hit balls all day as long as I didn’t have to go find them. Which explains why I haven’t been back to Bandon Dunes in eight years.
No. 16 at Bandon Dunes, which Eamon Lynch considers among his favorite holes on the planet (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)
Yet still I lie a couple thousand miles east with photographic recall of holes that gave me fits (the aforementioned 14th at Trails, the fifth at Bandon Dunes) and those I rank among my favorites on the planet (the fourth at Pacific Dunes, the fifth at Trails, the 16th at Bandon Dunes). I don’t dream of the Sheep Ranch though. I only saw that property when one group a day would be dropped off to devise their own layout from 13 green complexes scattered on a bluff north of the resort, years before it became the latest acclaimed course in the portfolio.
Each fitful night of near-sleep brings a reminder of what I’ve lost by not playing much golf anymore, hence a recent desire to get back into the swing, as it were. Every few months for almost eight years, I’ve gotten a text from my buddy Michael Chupka, who works at Bandon. “Ready to come back yet?” he asks, like a patient counselor.
One of these days I’m going to answer in the affirmative. If only to see if Bill and Ben have done anything yet to redeem that damned hole.
Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw turn up the volume with The Chain at Streamsong.
BOWLING GREEN, Fla. – There are expectations for architects as they design a golf hole. Length, width, severity of contours, difficulty, placement of the green – there’s room for creativity, sure, but stray too far from tradition and a few eyebrows certainly will be raised.
Except for short par 3s. Great architects have long let their imaginations wander with the most miniature of holes on many acclaimed courses.
“It seems that’s there a theme that every wonderful, great course I’ve ever seen always includes a little short par 3 somewhere,” said Ben Crenshaw, the two-time Masters champion, golf historian and design partner with Bill Coore. “Short par 3s are pretty tantalizing for a lot of people. There’s so many brilliant examples of that. It just adds spice.”
Coore and Crenshaw have included many such holes on the dozens of golf courses they have designed together. Often not much over 120 yards or even shorter, these pint-sized par 3s are famed for offering intrigue as players plan for birdies but often pencil in bogeys or worse on their scorecards.
Soon comes a new chance to play a string of such holes as Streamsong opens all of its newest short course, The Chain, to preview play March 31. Until then, the resort is allowing limited preview play on less than the full course as it continues to grow in. The Chain is expected to fully open to resort play later this year.
The new par-3 course, The Chain, at Streamsong in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Matt Hahn)
Built by Coore and Crenshaw, The Chain will offer 19 holes ranging from 41 to 293 yards, each offering a vast teeing area that allows players to pick a length. Want to play No. 8 with a driver? Step back to the huge metal chain link sunk into the ground and swing away. Want to play the same hole at 170? Go for it. It’s totally up to each group, or even each player. No. 1 can be 57 yards or 110, all the way to No. 19 at that ranges from 115 to 145.
The resort never refers to par for any hole, though the vast majority of them will require just one full shot for most players. Call them par 3s, or call them whatever you like – the resort’s operators don’t really care as long as players are having a blast.
The course was laid out in such a way that players can take a six-hole or a 13-hole loop, but resort operators expect most to play all 19. The Chain is a short walk from The Lodge at Streamsong, so late-afternoon tee times will be at a premium after many players tackle one of the resort’s highly acclaimed full-size courses – Red, Blue and Black – in the mornings. The Chain should prove especially popular during Streamsong’s peak winter season, when curtailed daylight might prevent a second 18-hole loop, and among players arriving to the resort mid-afternoon or simply those who just don’t want to stretch their golf to 36 traditional holes a day.
Nos. 18 and 19 of the new short course, The Chain, at Streamsong in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Matt Hahn)
Also expect to encounter plenty of fun shots on The Chain. Coore and Crenshaw were granted a feast of freedom in designing the layout that maxes out at 3,026 yards, and they dreamed up plenty of internal contours and ground features that will only improve as the greens and their sandy surrounds continue to mature and become even more firm and bouncy.
“We can do things with a shorter course, where players are hitting shorter shots and you can be a bit more aggressive with the greens and some of the things,” Coore said recently after a tour of the layout alongside Crenshaw. “Things are in more of a reduced scale, and you can take more liberties and a few more risks to do greens and surrounds with interesting things that you might not be able to do with a regulation course. …
“For years, people have said (about full-size courses), ‘You can’t do that, it won’t be accepted, that’s too radical.’ With a par-3 course, you can kind of dispense with that a little and say, ‘It’s a par-3 course; we can do that.’ If you’re in our profession, it gives you freedom to work.”
The Chain includes a bunker in the middle of a green at No. 6, the aforementioned No. 8 that can play for many as a short par 4, and several trips across water and quarries at the former phosphate mining site. There are plenty of slopes that will help feed golf balls onto the putting surfaces and more devious contours that can sweep a ball off a green.
The tee markers at The Chain at Streamsong are huge chain links left over from mining. But instead of markers on each side of the tee, these links mark the front and back positions for each tee, which can stretch for dozens of yards, allowing players to select the yardage they will play each hole. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
The hole most likely to be relived over post-round beverages is the 209-yard (max) 11th, where a punchbowl green awaits on the opposite side of a pond, just a thin slit in the nearly vertical bank showing the putting surface from the tee. Players can try to just crest the forward mounds with their tee shots, or they can intentionally take it deep past the flag and trust that the ball will roll backward onto the green – this might be the safest route, and it’s a blast to watch balls scamper back toward the putting surface as if pulled by a string.
“Probably most people would point to that hole,” Coore said when asked what he anticipates will be the biggest talker among the 19 holes. “You play over the beautiful lake. It used to be a flat piece of ground out there, and we just mined a bunch of sand out of it and made a big hole.”
But don’t expect No. 11 to be a pushover, even with slopes on all sides of the green to feed the ball toward the hole – especially for players who flirt with the water short or right in trying to play a shot to the yardage instead of just hitting it long. Streamsong Black, the 18-hole design by Gil Hanse, already offers a famous punchbowl green, but The Chain’s variation is much smaller and tighter in scope, fitting with Coore and Crenshaw’s focus on right-sized targets for the par-3 course.
“I think the long punchbowl hole, in this little family of holes, will probably be maybe the toughest hole because it’s a long carry,” Crenshaw said. “It’s basically an old idea if you have a long shot across something, that you have a gathering green, a punchbowl. That may be one at the top of the list” that players remember.
The new Bucket putting course at Streamsong in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Scott Powers)
Before or after a loop around The Chain, players can tackle The Bucket, the 2.6-acre putting course that sits within the par-3 course. Drinks and snacks also will be available onsite with the resort planning to add a clubhouse later, surely making the new complex a preferred hangout for resort guests.
Coore and Crenshaw also designed the Red Course at Streamsong, which opened in 2012 and ranks as the No. 2 Golfweek’s Best public-access layout in Florida and ties for No. 16 among all resort courses in the United States. The resort’s Blue Course by Tom Doak also opened in 2012 and ranks No. 3 among Florida’s public layouts and No. 20 among all U.S. resort courses, while the Black by Hanse opened in 2017 to become No. 4 in Florida and No. 23 on Golfweek’s Best resort list.
Coore said he’s always loved the allure of the site, where sand was piled high for decades as part of phosphate mining operations. The name of The Chain references the dragline chains used by miners, and The Bucket is so named because of the massive scoops once used to move earth at the mining site, one of which has been placed at the new putting course.
“People love it when they get here,” he said. “It’s a little mysterious the first time, but when they see it, they say ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in Florida.’ It has been so much fun to be a part of it.”
Crenshaw summed it up: “We do believe the Chain will be a positive extension of the journey.”
Cabot opens new courses in Florida and Saint Lucia, with more on the way.
Cabot effectively was a niche golf operator for much of its existence since the Canadian company opened its first course in 2012 on the remote shores of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
The original layout, Cabot Links, was exceptional, and it was followed a few years later by the even more highly ranked Cliffs course. More golf was added in 2020 in the form of a new short course, The Nest. The destination was a home run for company co-founder and CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar, who wisely put the emphasis on best-in-class golf at the Cape Breton property that was aided by the interest and investment of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort founder Mike Keiser.
But like Bandon Dunes, Cabot Cape Breton is a long way from most anywhere, and the Canadian golf season that far north runs just six months. While the Cabot brand represented the peak of modern Canadian golf, a world-class destination not to be missed by any seasoned golf traveler, for most of its existence the company wasn’t quite a major world player.
That has changed.
Cabot has grown up, and much of the globe is now its playground. By purchasing existing properties when promising and building from scratch when necessary, Cowan-Dewar has expanded Cabot’s operations south into the United States and across the Atlantic Ocean to Scotland. He has developed a focus on high-end accommodations, frequently manifesting in the form of aspirational real estate. And without defining how far he hopes to take the Cabot brand, he doesn’t plan to slow down.
The split-fairway, par-5 14th at Cabot Citrus Farms’ Karoo Course (Courtesy of Cabot/Matt Majka)
The growth has come fast and furious in recent years, most notably with the concurrent introduction of two courses in two different countries.
The built-from-scratch Point Hardy Golf Club – on one of the world’s most jaw-dropping pieces of golf land – opened to its members in December at Cabot Saint Lucia in the southern Caribbean. It soon will be followed in late January by the public-access Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida opening its first course, named Karoo, for preview play on the site of the former World Woods Golf Club.
All that is on the heels of Cabot having purchased Castle Stuart in Scotland in June of 2022, rebranding it to Cabot Highlands and announcing plans to add a second course designed by Tom Doak slated to open fully in 2025. And don’t forget Cabot Revelstoke, a mountainous destination planned to come online in 2025 with a layout by Rod Whitman, who designed the original Cabot course at Cape Breton. Revelstoke is in Canada, but this development is on the opposite side of the continent in British Columbia. Both these properties also will feature residential opportunities.
All the sudden, Cabot has become a year-round operator with developments that span nine time zones. It is now a company on which the sun will never set during the long days of a Canadian summer.
“We’ve always got a lot of irons in the fire,” Cowan-Dewar said in December while he overlooked a tropical marina not far from Point Hardy, trying to relax for a few minutes during a casual interview the day before his private Saint Lucia property hosted its members’ first rounds. “Did I ever conceive it would play out just like this? Of course not. But we did have plans to grow.”
From left, Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw, Mike Keiser and Ben Cowan-Dewar at Cabot Saint Lucia (Courtesy of Cabot/Jacob Sjöman)
The golf always came first for Cowan-Dewar, whose early ambitions drew the attention of a like-minded Keiser. The American developer serves as a sounding board for the Canadian, and from the beginning his advice has been to build great golf holes, then establish a business model around them.
That starts with the course architects. For Saint Lucia it would be the acclaimed team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who also designed the Cliffs at Cabot Cape Breton, rated by Golfweek’s Best as the top modern course in Canada. At Cabot Citrus Farms just north of Tampa, Cowan-Dewar selected the up-and-coming Kyle Franz for the Karoo course and is employing Franz alongside Mike Nuzzo and advisor Ran Morrissett for the second full-size 18 named The Roost, still in development and ambitiously slated to open for preview play in the spring of 2024.
Then it’s just a matter of giving the architects enough latitude to create something special on beautiful pieces of land ideally suited for golf.
“We’re hiring some of the greatest people to ever practice their craft,” Cowan-Dewar said. “How many times in your life do you get to work with some of the greatest artists at a moment in time when they are the best? And we’re lucky to do that. So we want to give them the biggest canvas possible with no limitations. Trust in the architects, and we can figure out the rest around that.”
That trust has led to two very different golf courses in Point Hardy and the Karoo at Cabot Citrus Farms.
Kapalua’s Plantation Course is steep, but exactly how steep? A hint: No. 18 tumbles down more than 50 feet.
Kapalua’s Plantation Course in Hawaii – site of this week’s season-opening The Sentry on the PGA Tour – was the first course built by the now-legendary design duo of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The mountainside layout opened in 1991 and was restored in 2019.
The Plantation maxes out at 7,596 yards with a par of 73, and it has only one par 3 on the back nine. With several downhill tee shots and the possibility of several drives rolling out past 400 yards, the course usually plays significantly shorter than the yardage might indicate.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week. Check out the maps of each hole below.
Thanks to Golfweek’s Best rankings, we break out the top courses around Orlando and Central Florida.
Looking for a break from the theme parks around Orlando? Whether you want to stay close or you’re willing to drive a bit, there are several courses available that appear on the Golfweek’s Best rankings of top public-access layouts in Florida.
But it’s not as easy as pulling up our state-by-state rankings, which lists Florida courses that might be a full day’s drive away from Central Florida. We wanted to focus on the eight top-ranked courses that, while they might require golfers spend up to 90 minutes in the car, are within reasonable driving distance.
For the purpose of this exercise, we limited driving time to within 90 minutes of Disney World. Why 90 minutes? Because it can take a while to get anywhere around Orlando, especially if you’re stuck on Interstate 4, so 90 minutes seemed like a reasonable amount of time in a car to reach great golf.
And why Walt Disney World Resort? Because chances are if you’re visiting Orlando, you will be bunking up not far from that entertainment giant’s theme parks or Universal Orlando nearby.
We used Google Maps for its drive times, keying in Walt Disney World Resort at a time with no significant traffic slowdowns. Take all drive times around Orlando and Central Florida with a grain of salt, of course, as backups frequently happen.
None of this is to say there aren’t plenty of other worthy places to play around Orlando. As a nearby resident, this author will attest to the simple pleasures to be found at Winter Park Golf Course – frequently called WP9 – just north of downtown Orlando. The short nine-holer is one of the most fun two hours you’re likely to spend on a golf course.
Included with this list is a general map of where to find all these courses. Each one on the list below is represented with a number on the map – keep scrolling to see the numbers.
Included with each course is its position in Florida on the Golfweek’s Best public-access list. For any course that appears on our other popular rankings lists, those positions are included as well.
A little background: The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce all our Golfweek’s Best course rankings.
The courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time – no membership required.
(Google Earth/Golfweek)
[afflinkbutton text=”Book discounted hotel rooms near Orlando” link=”https://www.sportgotravel.com/hotels/city/800047448?campaign=wGekekGlGw&cid=haehdndaon”]
