Golf 24 hours a day? It’s possible at Lofoten Links, but that’s only a part of the attraction.
As Cabot has expanded in the past several years from its roots with two courses in Nova Scotia into a global operator with resorts stretching from Europe to western Canada, there have been long summer nights when the sun never sets on the Canadian-based company.
That’s now more true than ever.
Cabot will announce this week that it is investing in Lofoten Links in Gimsøysand, Norway, one of those mind-bending locations for golf with a rugged seaside layout that has earned a spot on plenty of traveling golfers’ bucket lists. The course ties for No. 72 on Golfweek’s Best ranking of international courses.
During the summer, the sun never drops below the horizon at Lofoten Links, which is nearly 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle and flush against the Norwegian Sea. Twilight simply rebounds into morning for golfers with the stamina to keep swinging, and the course is open 24 hours a day in June and July.
“Having played golf there a couple of times, teeing off just before midnight, it’s just one of those experiences that I think every golfer should aspire to have in their lifetime,” said Ben Cowan-Dewar, co-founder and CEO of Cabot. “If you’ve had a taste of it, you’re keen to go back.”
But don’t confuse Lofoten Links as some sunshine gimmick. Originally opened in 1998 as a six-hole layout, the course has been expanded by architect Jeremy Turner, reaching a full 18 in 2015. Built on an old Viking site with two Viking graves on the course, it’s as mind-bending and extreme a golf environment as might be imagined. The coastal holes in particular are lined with rocky outcroppings, the links having been carved into stone.
“I was there five years ago and sort of fell in love with the property and the destination,” Cowan-Dewar said. “I mean, it’s just such a beautiful sight. … It’s a course that has gained a lot of recognition globally and for great reason. I think the chance to be a part of it just felt too good to be true.”
The northern lights shine above Lofoten Links in Norway. (Courtesy of Cabot and Lofoten Links/Jacob Sjoman)
Cowan-Dewar has overseen Cabot’s rapid expansion from its Cape Breton foundations in Nova Scotia to include ownership of courses at several far-flung points. The company’s properties now include Cabot Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, Cabot Citrus Farms (formerly World Woods) in Florida, Cabot Bordeaux (formerly Golf Du Médoc Resort) in France, Cabot Highlands (formerly Castle Stuart) in Scotland and the in-development Cabot Revelstoke in western Canada.
Cowan-Dewar said Cabot will work with Lofoten Links’ current ownership group, led by founder Frode Hov, whose family has owned the land for more than 400 years. Cowan-Dewar and Hov discussed a possible partnership several years ago, but talks ceased during Covid. With global golf travel buzzing these days, Cowan-Dewar said now is the right time to invest in such an off-the-beaten-path location – similar in that regard to Cabot’s courses in Nova Scotia.
“For us now, it’s really about making the investment work with their team and just trying to help them realize the full potential of their amazing asset,” Cowan-Dewar said. “Frode will still be very much involved and will oversee things on a day-to-day basis.”
Lofoten Links will retain its name without Cabot branding at least for the foreseeable future, different than the company’s other owned and operated properties that carry the company’s name. The property currently has several nearby lodges for guests, and Cabot is likely to help expand on accommodations.
Lofoten’s golf season runs from May until the middle of October, and with plenty of hiking and kayaking available plus the frequently brilliant displays of the northern lights a powerful attraction, it won’t be just golf filling the rooms. Golfers who want to see the northern lights must plan accordingly, with the nightly shows beginning in mid-August after the sun begins again to dip below the horizon toward the end of summer.
Could there be more golf in the works at Lofoten? Mike Keiser, the founder of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort and an early investor in Cabot, has said many times about the number of courses available that one plus one equals three when it comes to developing a far-off golf destination.
“To get to that formula, first you need one course, and Lofoten has a great one,” Cowan-Dewar said. “That’s always the hardest part. I think there is a potential for more golf, and I think that’s one of the things we’ll certainly look at. I think there is an opportunity. We really just want to see the first course reach its whole potential and then be able to go from there.
“I think the setting is truly otherworldly. … It’s just about building on top of what is just an extraordinary foundation.”
Check out a selection of images by international golf photographer Jacob Sjoman below:
Cabot proposal to expand Citrus Farms meets significant statewide headwinds.
One of golf’s fastest-growing course developers and owners, Canadian-based Cabot, has found itself in conflict with various environmentalists in Florida.
At stake for the developer is the possible addition of new golf holes at Cabot Citrus Farms north of Tampa. Cabot has proposed swapping 324 acres of the Withlacoochee State Forest land adjacent to the resort in exchange for 800-plus acres of Cabot-supplied timberland several counties north.
But aside from the change in usage and status for the small sandy forest adjacent to Citrus Farms, Cabot’s plan runs counter to the interests of multiple organizations and many individuals who argue that such a deal might be the top of a slippery slope on which more public land would lose protections.
This debate comes on the heels of even greater recent friction between environmental concerns and golf development, heated by a secretive but since-scrapped proposal to build golf courses in a Florida State Park in southeast Florida. Judging by public commentary on social media and in newspaper editorials, the debate about converting public land into golf holes isn’t over.
The Withlacoochee State Forest website describes the breadth of the activities available, including biking, hiking, fishing, boating and much more in a publicly owned amenity that stretches across five counties.
Cabot bought the former World Woods Golf Club in 2022 and quickly set about renovating its two existing courses. With the resort now branded Citrus Farms, architect Kyle Franz has completed the 18-hole, full-sized Karoo course, which has opened while work continues on the second main 18. Citrus Farms also includes two new short courses, and the resort will include homes and upscale cabins that will be part of a rental pool. If the land swap is approved, more golf could be built.
Citrus Farms sits on rolling, sandy terrain near Brooksville, just inland from the Gulf of Mexico. On the resort’s western flank sits the 324 acres of land owned by the Florida Forest Service that is part of the Withlacoochee State Forest, which includes multiple tracts and distinct environments among its total 164,073 acres stretched across five counties. The plot of protected land that Cabot desires is less than a mile wide, with the four-lane Suncoast Parkway directly on its opposite flank.
Cabot has proposed trading for that land, offering the state a much larger parcel in Levy County some 60 miles to the north.
“We pursued whether there was a chance to come up with a win-win, which would be the state getting greater land of significantly greater acreage and preservation value in return for land on which we could build additional golf to the west of Citrus Farms,” said Ben Cowan-Dewar, the Canadian co-founder and CEO of Cabot.
“What we proposed is something we have done in Cape Breton (in Nova Scotia), a property swap to be able to build more golf which will create more economic development, more jobs and a more attractive destination,” said Cowan-Dewar, who estimates Citrus Farms could eventually provide as many as 500 jobs in largely rural Hernando County. “And in return, we give something to the state that I think they feel is of real value to them. That process is one we had done in Nova Scotia with great success.”
The land swap would be unusual in Florida, where state-owned conservation lands have traditionally been granted much greater protection. Opposition to the proposal has been ramping up, including from organizations that monitor Florida’s land and wildlife.
“The underlying thing is the precedent that this would create, the idea that anywhere in the state of Florida you could have a developer in a community that looks at adjacent conservation lands as vacant,” said Julie Wraithmell, the executive director of Florida Audubon and vice president of the National Audubon Society, a 600,000-member conservation organization that strives to protect land and wildlife across the U.S.
Wraithmell said developers might see an open piece of land and think, “Gosh, wouldn’t it be improved with a mini-mall, or with a golf course, or with a car wash?” But she said that such an idea, and the fact the state will contemplate such a land swap, flies in the face of constitutional protections that Florida’s conservation lands have traditionally enjoyed. She also pointed out that environmental tourism combined with Florida’s state parks and forests is a significant economic driver, as is golf.
“If your readers are golf enthusiasts, I’m sure that they do have interest in courses and opportunities” to play, Wraithmell told Golfweek. “I would just say that it’s about the right use in the right place that is the issue here. It’s not an opposition to golf, but it is that these protected places are important to Florida, not just for bunnies and trees but for our quality of life.”
Such objections to Cabot’s proposal have gained steam in recent weeks, especially since the proposal to add golf to Jonathan Dickinson State Park – nearly 200 miles away on the opposite side of the state. That plan was leaked by a state employee who later was fired. The proposal was then formally announced, protested and quickly scrapped in what has become more rare in Florida than a snowball: bipartisan political opposition.
The Cabot proposal had flown under the radar until it was quickly – and without previous announcement or public commentary – sent from the Florida Cabinet and Governor Ron DeSantis to the state’s Acquisition and Restoration Council (ARC), a 10-member group with representatives from various state agencies. Among other duties, the ARC is responsible for evaluating any land swaps involving state-owned conservation properties. The ARC will provide advice to DeSantis and his state cabinet, which then will have final say on approval on Cabot’s proposal.
The ARC next meets Sept. 12 in the state capitol of Tallahassee, but the Citrus Farms proposal is not included on the published agenda for that meeting. There has been no timeline given for when the ARC might make its recommendations, when the group would provide any insight to data and opinions that might be used in making its recommendations, or when there might be a chance for public comment periods.
It’s unlikely Cabot’s proposal would have garnered as much attention if not for the Jonathan Dickinson State Park controversy, which united typically disparate voices. It’s worth noting that while golf is a common thread, the protected lands in question are quite different.
Jonathan Dickinson State Park is a popular respite from nearby and rapidly expanding population centers such as Jupiter, Hobe Sound and West Palm Beach. It’s 11,500 acres include boating and tours, cabins, canoeing, hiking, horse trails, swimming and picnic areas in one of the fastest-growing regions of the United States. The proposed golf courses there would have taken up more than 800 prime acres and forced a reconsideration of the park as it has traditionally been known. That park sees more than 120,000 visitors per year.
The 324 acres of land Cabot has tried to acquire in a land swap sits just west of Citrus Farms and stretches less than a mile wide to the Suncoast Parkway, a major toll road. Highway 98 runs just south of the resort and the patch of Florida State Forest, which provides a wildlife corridor since the toll road was completed. (Map by Google Earth)
By contrast, the state forest land that Cabot wants – part of the Withlacoochee Oak Park South Trailhead – is much less utilized. It includes rough trails and a basic parking area, and there is no official number available as to how many people might hike among its 324 acres. Squeezed between a large highway and Citrus Farms, it is a small part of the much larger Withlacoochee State Forest. Cowan-Dewar pointed out that the land in question was declared part of the state forest only as the Suncoast Parkway was being built beginning in the late 1990s with construction running for decades and still continuing. The environmental groups counter that the parcel is still valuable as a corridor for wildlife that was displaced by the road project, along with other benefits.
Also worth noting is that state parks and state forests are managed separately with different goals. The 10-year plan implemented in 2015 for Withlacoochee State Forest explains the need to preserve land and provide recreation, while also offering the possibility that timber assets can be made available for purchase to lumber companies, with the efficient generation of revenue acceptable. In general, Florida State Parks are managed to much tighter standards of environmental protection than are Florida State Forests.
Still in question is the value of the 861 acres in Levy County that Cabot will provide to the state if the swap goes through. That land has been used for timber production, and multiple studies by state organizations and universities have pointed out that such land and its curated pine trees provide less valuable habitat for wildlife than non-timbered and more natural parcels. It will be up to the ARC to decide officially if the former timberland is worth more to the state and its citizens – in cost, potential revenue and environmental impact – than the acreage next to Cabot.
None of this, of course, is new in Florida. Competing interests long have placed developers and environmentalists into opposing camps. Expect the debate to continue.
“I think it’s heartening to see the way that Floridians are standing up,” Wraithmell said. “I think that everybody is kind of saying that there is no lack of places to play golf in Florida. But it is increasingly rare to find the kinds of places where wildlife is able to thrive and Floridians are able to have these kinds of natural outdoor experiences.
“Both (golf and protected areas) are important parts of the Florida economy. But it’s not a zero-sum game. We don’t have to sacrifice conservation lands in order to also provide golf recreation for our residents and visitors.”
Cowan-Dewar, meanwhile, hopes Floridians don’t confuse Cabot’s proposal with the Jonathan Dickinson State Park conflict.
“I can tell you 100 percent that we had nothing to do with that,” Cowan-Dewar said. “I think they got conflated, although they are very separate and very distinct. …
“For us, this has represented a very meaningful investment into Hernando County and into the state, and I think it’s been an unbelievably welcoming jurisdiction in Hernando. We have been thrilled to be able to grow these jobs and really grow the destination.”
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.”
Ben Cowan-Dewar was inspired by Mike Keiser: ‘No one since Old Tom Morris has had more impact.’
(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.)
BANDON, Ore. – Ben Cowan-Dewar, who dreamed of building a far-away golf resort in Nova Scotia, Canada, has learned much by studying Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon.
The Canadian developer has partnered with Mike Keiser on several of the best new golf course properties in recent decades, most notably the two highly ranked courses at Cabot Cape Breton. Cowan-Dewar has in recent years expanded to Scotland, Saint Lucia, Florida and soon western Canada.
Cowan-Dewar spoke with Golfweek about the inspiration and financial backing he derived from Keiser, the developer of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which in May celebrates its 25th anniversary.
How much have Bandon Dunes and Mike Keiser influenced your career?
It would be hard to imagine Bandon having a more profound effect on many people’s lives than it did on mine. When I first went there (in 2001), I was a lover of golf courses who went to this far-off place and played Bandon Dunes and Pacific. I think it gave me the ability to dream, you know. I’ve been dreaming since I was a kid about building a golf course, but I think to see something like that on the coast, it sort of gave me a dream. …
There’s no chance I would have even been able to undertake Cabot 19 years ago had I not seen Bandon. I think Bandon gave me the ability to dream really big dreams. And then Mike, in his partnership and mentorship, really helped fulfill them. It had an absolutely profound effect.
Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser and Cabot founder Ben Cowan-Dewer (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)
What was your first conversation about Cabot with Mike Keiser like?
We were two years from partnering, and he was busy with trying to get Trails open. And, you know, he said he had bitten off more than he could chew in remote golf. That partly was a natural defense for a man who was probably assaulted on a weekly basis by some young buck who wanted to build a golf course in the middle of nowhere.
At the end of that conversation, which I call a very polite brush-off, he said, “Hey, wait, you’ve got to get more land, because you won’t be able to buy land for a second course (Cabot Cliffs) after the first course (Cabot Links).”
In 2007 he partnered with me and made the dream come true, and from those humble beginnings, we built on that foundation.
He’s been an exemplar, a mentor, a partner, a father figure, and I’ve been blessed to know him.
Is it fair to say that no other modern golf developers had the impact that Mike has had?
I would say, not even close. I would go further than that to say no one since Old Tom Morris has had more impact.
It’s been only 25 years, and if you think about Barnbougle (in Tasmania, and in which Keiser invested before it opened in 2004), and you think about Cabot, those were two that he was directly related to early on. Then you think about all of the other stuff that’s been built in that period of time since.
I just can’t think of anybody else. You said “modern” but I would drop the modern and just say, who’s had a greater impact on golf development in history? I can’t think of anybody.
What are some main lessons you’ve learned from Bandon or Keiser?
I have a book of what I call my Keiserisms. Mike has this unbelievable ability to make things seem very simple, even if they are anything but. I think when you have the success that he has – he’s had two very different types of businesses (golf and greeting cards), and he’s been a global leader in two different sectors. Some of that is getting people to follow you, and he has that in spades, but he just has so many really simple truisms.
One of my favorites is to do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going do it. That means if you say you’re going to have something on Tuesday, you don’t wait and have it on Wednesday. Well, that sounds pretty simple but it’s a hard thing to live by.
Simply being someone that people want to work for, to me that is one of his greatest hallmarks. You see that with all of the great architects in the world that have lined up and wanted to work with him.
And he just has the ability to draw the very best out of people.
Mike Keiser was an early investor in Cabot in Nova Scotia, Canada (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)
So many developers and courses have tried to follow the Bandon model, but few have been able to pull it off as well. What do they miss?
I think there’s a couple of things. One, Mike said at Cabot in the early days that Cabot will be different than Bandon in 20 ways, he just didn’t know which 20 ways yet. For a man that had done the impossible at Bandon, he wasn’t trying to carbon copy it and say this is a franchise model.
And so I think whenever you’re trying to copy an original, it’s probably pretty hard. He had the original, and he didn’t go and try and copy it. He tried to make everything authentic to the locations he worked in.
He obviously focused on a couple of really key ingredients, but I think like any really good business that is consumer-facing, it’s really about delivering to your customer the very best product you can. People can lose sight of that and have their own vision, and it’s just not as customer-centric as Mike would be in his business.
What’s it like to play golf with Mike?
He’s fast. He’s good a player too, but he’s fast more than he’s good. And that suited me quite well. He is competitive, and he loves the competition, but above all else he is fast.
On the opening day of Cabot, we stood on the first tee and saw every golfer tee off, like he has done at Bandon. So we didn’t get to play until the next morning.
The next morning we were playing with the premier of Nova Scotia – for you, he was the equivalent of a governor – and Mike told the premier, let’s play at 8. And Mike was on the tee at 7:41, and he said, “Do we need to wait for him?” I said, “Well, he is the premier.” Mike’s ball was in the air before 8, and the premier was running down to meet us having seen us out his window. So speed trumps all.
Cabot Highlands in Scotland reveals the name and logo for its new Tom Doak-designed layout.
Cabot Highlands in Inverness, Scotland, has chosen a name for its new Tom Doak-designed course that is now scheduled to open for preview play in 2025: Old Petty.
The name is a nod to the Old Petty Church, which was built in 1839 and sits off what will become the 16th green. The now-unused church is believed to sit at the site of an even older church, and the Old Petty Church is reported to have hosted an unusual custom: Mourners in the early 1800s would run to the church’s graveyard during funerals while carrying the coffin.
The logo for the new Old Petty course will be the highland cow, or “Hairy Coo” as the locals call them.
Cabot revealed the logo, based on a highland cow, for Old Petty, the new course being built by Tom Doak in Scotland. (Courtesy of Cabot)
Cabot revealed Doak’s planned routing for Old Petty last summer, with holes passing a 400-year-old castle that provided the previous name for the property, Castle Stuart, before the Canadian-based Cabot bought it and rebranded the northern Scottish resort in 2022.
Old Petty will be on the southwest side of the property’s original Castle Stuart Golf Links built by Mark Parsinen and Gil Hanse, which ranks as the No. 4 modern course in Great Britain and Ireland. Built on land that was previously farmed, Old Petty will wrap down and around an estuary, offering stunning views and a layout that crisscrosses in a huge shared fairway for Nos. 1 and 18.
Cabot also plans to extend the unique white clubhouse to include a new whiskey and cigar bar, a clubhouse grill bar and a chophouse restaurant.
Check out several recent illustrations that provide a glimpse at how Old Petty might look.
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.
Best golf views in the world? Cabot Saint Lucia enters that conversation. But how will it play?
Bill Coore doesn’t want to talk about “signature holes.”
That leftover cliché of 1980s course development and marketing has fallen out of favor among many fans of great golf architecture, for good reason. In trying to design one hole that is especially photogenic or memorable, the other 17 might be best left on the cutting room floor.
“We’ve failed, to be quite candid, if we have a signature hole,” said Coore, partner of Ben Crenshaw in designing several of the best modern courses in the world. “To me, that basically is saying that you spent all your efforts on that one hole. You grounded the entire golf course around one hole.”
Coore admits with a chuckle that he has resorted to subterfuge when presented the question of what is the signature hole at several courses he has routed around the world.
“We’ve actually gone to the reverse sometimes when somebody will ask what’s your signature hole – at least I have, I don’t know that Ben has – but a couple times I have literally picked the most bland hole on the entire course, and I’m talking about photogenically and visually speaking, and said that’s our signature hole right there,” the native of North Carolina said with a laugh.
Instead, Coore wants to lay out courses that flow from hole to hole, never lacking in interest while taking advantage of all the ground has to offer. He’s more concerned about the shots to be played on any given hole, less so with photo ops.
Even on the inland holes atop a ridge, as seen from behind the third green, Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot Saint Lucia offers stunning views of the ocean and volcanic island. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
“We think of golf as being a collection of holes that go together and fit together,” he said. “Maybe one or two or three or four are more dramatic than the others, but we don’t think of them as signature holes.”
So what to do with a site such as Cabot Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, home to Coore and Crenshaw’s still-in-development Point Hardy Golf Club? The whole place screams, “Take a picture!” Cliffs rise straight from the Atlantic Ocean with new golf holes perched atop them, waves crashing into white foam below. This is one of Earth’s great meetings of land and sea.
Given such a beautiful tropical site that really has all the makings of a photo shoot, with a mile and a half of see-it-to-believe-it scenery, on what do Coore and Crenshaw narrow their focus to build a golf course bestowed with so much drama?
Really, Bill? Not the point of cliffs jutting into the ocean on this end of the property, or the promontory at the other end? Even Coore smiles as he describes the wow factor of Cabot Saint Lucia, one of several new Cabot Collection properties that will expand the Canadian company’s reach over the next several years from Nova Scotia to the tropics, Scotland, Florida and western Canada.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CoZyeGOM-8n/
“The site is so visually spectacular,” said Coore, whose design credits include such highly ranked layouts as the Sheep Ranch and Bandon Trails at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, Sand Hills in Nebraska and Cabot Cliffs in Nova Scotia. “Most people will come here and ooh and ah, particularly as you look down the hill or look along the cliff at the shoreline and the ocean. It’s almost beyond description, dramatic. Ben and I are both pretty conservative when it comes to our assessments and descriptions, but you’ll see, it’s just, well …”
His voice trails off as he imagines the cliffs and all the opportunities for superlative golf holes upon them. Then he gets back to the matter at hand and what he considers the primary job of a golf architect, especially at an extreme site such as Point Hardy featuring volcanic hills and rocky ground. Coore has said before that it’s easy to build a hard golf course, and the trick is in designing a fun layout that golfers want to tackle again and again.
“Playability, playability, playability,” he repeats as his mantra. “And trying to create a golf course that doesn’t end up being one that people might come and take photographs of every hole and just a photogenic course, and then they go, ‘Eh, it really wasn’t that much fun; I didn’t enjoy it,’ kind of thing. It would be too extreme, or something. That’s what we’re hoping not to happen. We want to try to create something that they’re going to want to come back and play.”
Tom Doak lays out the Holy Grail of golf design, and it might not be what you think.
INVERNESS, Scotland – What do you get when you hand over some 150 acres of prime waterfront land in the Scottish Highlands to American golf architect Tom Doak? Not even Doak is sure yet.
But Cabot – the rapidly expanding Canadian company that started with the highly acclaimed Cabot Links and Cabot Cliffs in Nova Scotia – is betting Doak’s work will be worth an overseas flight for traveling golfers.
Cabot acquired Castle Stuart Golf Links and its eponymous 18-hole layout near Inverness, Scotland, in June with development plans that include a second course and luxury cabins just minutes away from the Inverness airport. The property has been rebranded Cabot Highlands. Ben Cowan-Dewar, CEO and co-founder of Cabot, has hired Doak to build the second 18 with plans to break ground in 2023 and a possible soft opening sometime in 2024.
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“We’ve got to get the routing done first,” quipped Doak with a laugh as he met with a small group of American and Canadian golf writers in October at Castle Stuart.
Cabot has expanded rapidly in recent years. The company took off in 2012 in Nova Scotia with Cabot Links, a Rod Whitman design that ranks No. 2 on Golfweek’s Best list of modern Canadian courses. That course was joined in 2015 by Cabot Cliffs, a Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw design that ranks No. 1 on that modern Canadian list.
In the Caribbean, a Coore and Crenshaw design at Cabot St. Lucia is slated to open in 2023. In Canada, the company announced last year the development of Cabot Revelstoke in British Columbia, which will feature a Whitman design scheduled to open in 2024. And in Florida, Cabot has purchased the former World Woods, rebranded it Citrus Farms and is having its two courses renovated with a planned reopening in 2023.
The second course at Cabot Highlands will mark the first time Doak has worked with Cowan-Dewar, but Doak has established himself as one of the premium designers of his era. His course credits, either solo or in combination with other designers, include 12 courses on Golfweek’s Best list of the top 200 modern courses built since 1960 in the U.S., including four in the top 10. He also laid out five of the top 50 Golfweek’s Best modern international courses, including three of the top five on that list.
Gil Hanse and Mark Parsinen designed the original 18 at Castle Stuart in Scotland, now named Cabot Highlands. (Golfweek)
Doak met the handful of writers, including this author, at Cabot Highlands’ clubhouse, then led the group on a tour of some of the property where the new course will be constructed. It’s a stunning site alongside the Moray Firth, a huge bay that is fed from a river that flows through nearby Inverness with waters from Loch Ness.
The original 18 at Cabot Highlands, built by Gil Hanse and Castle Stuart founder Mark Parsinen (who died in 2019), sits high upon cliffs overlooking the Moray Firth with some of the most dramatic golf views in Scotland. That course opened in 2009 and ranks No. 4 on Golfweek’s Best list of modern courses in Great Britain and Ireland. It has hosted the Scottish Open four times.
Doak’s parcel is lower, stretching from the clubhouse, past a 400-year-old castle that gave the property its original name and down a ridge toward the water. The rolling site has been farmed with the land smoothed over as it descends toward the coast, which means Doak’s team likely will move a lot of earth to create interesting internal contours – similar to the original layout at Castle Stuart.
Doak said the new course won’t quite be a true out-and-back routing with nine holes in one direction and nine coming back, but it likely will be close to that with a few redirections along the way. Parsinen originally planned to build a course by Arnold Palmer on the site, but those plans have been replaced.
Doak spoke candidly about the opportunities, challenges and thrill of building on the site and in Scotland in general. He also spoke openly about several of his other projects around the world and how he approaches the lofty expectations that come with building on such a beautiful site. Lengthy excerpts of that conversation are included below.
Canadian-based developer Cabot plans to expand Castle Stuart with a new Tom Doak-designed layout.
Cabot, the developer that leaped into the world of golf with Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia and has expanded beyond the Canadian border with projects in Florida and St. Lucia, has added to its portfolio, this time in the Scottish Highlands.
Cabot will announce this week that it has acquired Castle Stuart Golf Links and its accompanying resort amenities near Inverness, Scotland. The property will be rebranded Cabot Highlands.
Opened in 2009 with a design by Gil Hanse and the late Mark Parsinen, with holes that feature Moray Firth on one side of several fairways and bluffs to the other side, Castle Stuart Golf Links ranks No. 4 on Golfweek’s Best list of modern courses in Great Britain and Ireland.
In 2024 that course will be joined by a second 18, Cabot said, this one to be built by Tom Doak. The property also is home to a new short course that is open now for preview play and officially will open in 2023.
Castle Stuart Golf Links in Scotland will be renamed Cabot Highlands. (Courtesy of Cabot)
“Castle Stuart has been considered a benchmark of exceptional Scottish golf since it first opened thirteen years ago,” Ben Cowan-Dewar, CEO and co-founder of Cabot, said in a media release set for Tuesday that will announce the acquisition. “We are honored to be a steward of the land and carry the original vision for the property forward. Our goal is to create unforgettable memories in magical places, and there are few places in the world more awe-inspiring than the Scottish Highlands.”
The property will feature boutique accommodations, and Cabot said real estate will be a major part of the expansion with sales expected to begin in 2023. The property will feature upscale cabins that homeowners can rent to resort guests when the owners are not in residence. Featured activities for guests and property owners will include hiking, cycling, fishing, falconry, horseback riding and more. The property’s features include views of Kessock Bridge and Chanonry Lighthouse
“I couldn’t think of a better partner than Cabot to lead our next chapter,” said Stuart McColm, general manager of Castle Stuart and the forthcoming Cabot Highlands. “The work that’s been done at Cabot Cape Breton on the courses and within the community speaks for itself, and I know our beloved founder, Mark Parsinen, would be proud of the plans ahead to fulfill his original vision for the destination. Not only is this significant golf news, it is also a major boost for the regional economy of the Highlands.”
Cabot has been busy announcing expansions in the past couple years. The company took off in 2012 in Nova Scotia with Cabot Links, a Rod Whitman design that ranks No. 2 on Golfweek’s Best list of modern Canadian courses. That course was joined in 2015 by Cabot Cliffs, a Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw design that ranks No. 1 on that modern Canadian list.
In the Caribbean, the Coore and Crenshaw design at Cabot St. Lucia is slated to open in early 2023. In Canada, the company announced last year the development of Cabot Revelstoke in British Columbia, which will feature a course designed by Whitman that is scheduled to open in 2024. And in Florida, Cabot has purchased the former World Woods, rebranded it Citrus Farms and is having its two courses renovated by Kyle Franz and the team of Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns with a planned reopening in 2023.
The namesake castle at Castle Stuart, around which Tom Doak will build a new course slated to open in 2024 as past of the property’s rebranding as Cabot Highlands (Courtesy of Cabot)
The new layout at Cabot Highlands will be the first by Doak for the company. That course will play around the property’s namesake 400-year-old castle and across expansive land with several holes along the water, Cabot said. Doak plans to start construction in 2023.
“I’m thrilled to partner with Ben Cowan-Dewar and the Cabot team,” said Doak, who has built courses around the world, including The Renaissance Club in Scotland. “We have been searching for the perfect destination for years. Our goal is to create a distinctly Scottish golf experience that appeals to players at all levels with an authentic links-style course that puts the golf holes front and center.”
Mike Keiser instilled in his boys a deep curiosity, which has translated into some of the best golf course developments in the world.
Mike Keiser, the eminently pro-walking founder of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon and staunch supporter of the game on foot, had a surprisingly simple way to get his two sons interested in golf more than three decades ago.
“Hey, you wanna go ride in a golf cart?” Keiser said he would ask young sons Michael and Chris when he wanted to introduce them to the game.
It wasn’t about hitting shots, not about architecture, nor entirely about developing an ethos that would lead to a family golfing legacy. It was all about young kids having fun, no matter what it took. If that meant a ride in a golf cart at age 3, then those cart batteries better have been fully charged.
Those initial forays into the game for the father alongside his sons – near their Chicago home and at the family’s summer house in Michigan and at courses around the world – have led to one of the great family success stories in golf. After Mike developed Bandon Dunes in the late 1990s and stretched his reach into destinations such as Canada and soon St. Lucia, Michael and Chris followed suit. The sons have opened their own highly ranked resort at Sand Valley in Wisconsin and plan to extend into new territories as well.
Mike Keiser plays at his sons’ Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin on opening day in 2017. (Courtesy of Sand Valley/Jeffrey R. Bertch)
But this isn’t a business story. Not a golf development story, per se – barrels of ink have been expended in telling those stories of how the Keisers built and contributed to a new market for links-style resort golf in the U.S. and beyond. This is a story of how a father got his sons into the game and piqued their curiosity about what might be possible in golf, course and resort development, and beyond.
Golfweek has since 1983 – with a recent two-year break because of COVID-19 – selected a Father of the Year in all of golf, and the list includes players, fathers of players, business leaders and regular dads who possess an irregular knack for fostering a passion for golf among their kids. This year that Father’s Day honor goes to Mike Keiser in reflection not of his business success but instead for his approach to helping sons Michael and Chris find their own paths into golf by sharing his knowledge and curiosity, his contacts, his love of fun courses and only occasionally his money.
And it all began with good times in golf carts, smacking balls along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and playing cross-country golf through the woods on land that later would become Mike’s first golf development, the highly rated, nine-hole and private Dunes Club in Michigan.
“For me, it was always a game, and it was a made-up game,” said Michael, now 40. “We didn’t really start by playing golf. We had golf clubs and golf balls, but they were always games on the beach in front of our house in Michigan.”
Mike would sometimes hit balls into Lake Michigan, then pay Michael to don a snorkel and retrieve them, Michael said. It was all part of a great adventure.
“My dad is a Tom Sawyer figure; I’ve always thought of him as Tom Sawyer,” Michael said in reference to Mark Twain’s character who can talk his friends into taking on his tasks with a smile and charisma. “He convinced me that retrieving his golf balls out of the lake was the funnest thing in the world. A lot of my introduction, I guess you could say, was empowering his practice, but I couldn’t have had more fun doing it.”
There’s that word again. Fun. Want to get your kids into golf? Keep that in mind.
“I have fond memories of Snickers bars and Reese’s and Cokes and putting around,” Chris, 34, said of his early days around the Dunes Club. “There’s just this kind of fun association with the place. When I got into actually trying to play, he would encourage me to tee it up in the fairway and keep it fun, not really keeping score.”
The new Sheep Ranch course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes)
That goal of fun golf has been a frequent theme as the family has expanded its reach in the game. Mike was looking to transport the enjoyable and accessible game played on links courses in the United Kingdom and Ireland to the U.S., and after much searching for a perfect site, he chose the remote coastline of Oregon to introduce a different kind of golf to an American market. It wasn’t about resistance to scoring, never about overly green grass, and not strictly about birdies versus bogeys. He believed there was an underserved U.S. market of golfers looking for fun above all else, and he set out to develop that market.
The results have been legendary, as Bandon Dunes now operates five full-size courses that rank among the best in the world, as well as a gorgeous par-3 course named The Preserve that helped reinvigorate the appetite for short courses at U.S. resorts. And his dream continues at Bandon Dunes, as he plans to add yet more holes.
Mike’s involvement in the development of Cabot and its two incredible links-style courses in Nova Scotia – in partnership with Ben Cowan-Dewar – further cemented his status as a premium developer of a new kind of resort and golf-first ethos that has been frequently imitated in recent decades.
Family trips often involved the sport as the boys grew. They are two among four siblings born to Mike and wife Lindy, with sisters Leigh and Dana following their own pursuits that didn’t involve golf. Mike and Lindy now have eight grandchildren, two per each of their own children.
“Having and raising children is the most important thing you ever do,” said Mike, a native of East Aurora near Buffalo, New York, who served in the U.S. Navy before cofounding a greeting card company, Recycled Paper Greetings, that would grow to be one of the largest in the U.S.
Both boys played other sports, and their interests in golf would sometimes ebb and flow, they each said. But Mike had a way of sparking their interest time and again. He once took a young-teen Chris and his cousin, Scott, on a tour of Scotland that included rounds at Royal Dornoch – a Mike Keiser favorite – and Brora Golf Course, which is famed among experienced golf travelers for having sheep and cattle grazing the fairways and fences around the greens to keep the livestock out.
All that great golf and history and architecture and all those kinds of things were fantastic for the grown-ups, Mike said, but the kids found another unexpected reason to laugh.
“Chris and Scott found a ball in a cow pie, and they said ‘Watch this,’ and they blasted out of cow pies,” Mike said with a laugh. “So I took them to play golf at Brora, and what was the highlight? Golf balls in cow pies.
“So moms and dads out there, if you’re playing golf with your younger kids, don’t expect them to like golf for the same reason you do. They’ll appreciate the views and et cetera et cetera, but it will take something like their ball landing in a cow pie to really get their attention. There’s more than one path to getting your kids to joining you in golf.”
The same could be said for the sons’ growing involvement in resort development. Michael finished college and worked in golf operations at Barnbougle, which his dad helped finance in Tasmania, before branching into residential development. Chris became a teacher for two years after college, then worked in digital golf sales. Neither went straight to work for their dad, instead finding their own way back to resort development over the years. Chris eventually landed a job working on digital initiatives for Bandon Dunes, and he and Michael paired up to open Sand Valley in 2016 in remote central Wisconsin, with their resort adding a second 18, Mammoth Dunes, in 2017.
Though Mike was involved as much more than interested spectator, it was up to the brothers to make Sand Valley work. Michael said that his dad bought the forested land and brought in founding members who provided seed capital, but the boys were responsible for most of the financing and on-the-ground decisions. It was their project, boom or bust. Dad, to a great extent, got out of the way.
“The best thing was that it was their idea, each step of the way,” said Mike, who didn’t want to be a controlling force as his sons built their own names in the industry. “It’s not good if you say, ‘Son, I’ll pay you twice as much as you’d make on the outside if you work for me.’ I don’t like that model. I prefer the model that Chris and Michael did that was sort of aligned, to get a sense of the industry and then shift to Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley. … Some dads push kids to work with the dad. Let them choose. Let their path be their path.”
Sand Valley in Wisconsin (Courtesy of Sand Valley/Brandon Carter)
Mike said his sons make a nice team, a mesh of Michael’s interest in sales and marketing and Chris’ skills in operations big and small. Both sons mentioned processes and methodology learned from their dad as keys to success, including one trait of their father when asked what they thought might surprise outsiders most.
“He’s extremely curious, everywhere he goes,” Chris said. “He’s deeply curious. That’s also reflected when we travel. He’s always asking people about the area. What’s it like to live here? What are the schools like? I think that can be disarming to people who maybe know who he is, know him in the world of golf and maybe expect him to be this intimidating character – he’s really not that way. … He has a common touch; it’s just part of who he is.”
Michael echoed those sentiments.
“One of the methods we learned before we even knew we were learning it, was just the curiosity of learning every day,” Michael said. “Growing up, if we were in a taxi cab, my dad would get to know the driver and ask him a hundred questions. Waiting in line at a restaurant, ask more questions. I think he trained us to be curious, to be unafraid to ask questions. …
“You don’t have to know everything, but there is probably somebody out there who knows the answers. Find that person, and ask them questions.”
As the family continues to expand its operations – in Florida, in the Caribbean, possibly in Scotland and beyond – there isn’t necessarily a lot of time for reflection. There’s too many great golf holes in interesting location to build. But the boys will keep one lesson in mind, as frequently expressed by their dad.
“He taught us that to whom much is given, even more is expected,” Michael said. “And nobody has been given more opportunities in the golf industry than my brother and me. Maybe Young Tom Morris, right? It’s not lost on us that we’ve been handed these opportunities. …
“We learned from so many adventures. We grew from those and we learned our own boundaries. My dad thought kids should learn from their mistakes. Go out there and take risks. Whatever the opposite of a helicopter parent is, that’s what he was. If he had just shared his wisdom, we wouldn’t have learned it for ourselves. We had to go learn it for ourselves. … He doesn’t offer a lot of advice per se, but he introduced us to incredible opportunities.”
