Tag: Cabot Collection

Photos: Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot Saint Lucia nears completion, and you need to see it to believe it

See the photos of some of the most visually dramatic oceanside golf holes ever built.

What do you get when you hire the famed design team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw to build a course on one of the most dramatic meetings of land and sea imaginable? Ben Cowan-Dewar, co-founder and CEO of the Canadian-based Cabot Collection, has his answer in the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia.

Scheduled to open in December, Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot Saint Lucia is perched above the Atlantic Ocean on cliffs that offer a simply ridiculous set of visuals on more than half the club’s 18 holes. Picture any of the most scenic holes anywhere – Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, Pebble Beach Golf Links or Cypress Point in California, even the original Cabot courses in Nova Scotia as famous examples – and Point Hardy matches them all for you-gotta-be-joking views, proximity to the ocean and pulse-raising golf shots over cauldrons of salt spray.

All the holes at Point Hardy, including the inland holes atop a ridge or playing through a valley, are within sight of the ocean, and eight of them offer a chance to rinse a golf ball in salt water. On a day when the trade winds kick it up a notch, golfers will feel ocean spray at several points along the routing.

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The hard part wasn’t building a dramatic course on the steep ground at the northern tip of the volcanic island. On a recent walk around the course as construction of Point Hardy nears completion, Coore said the toughest part was building golf holes on which the fun factor at least approaches the level of the visuals.

“Playability, playability, playability,” said Coore, who has routed some of the best courses to be constructed in the world over the past 30 years. “It would have been very easy to build a course where the views are incredible but that just wasn’t any fun to play, because the terrain is so steep. The challenge was to make it fun, to make people want to play it again.”

Did the team succeed on that front? Time will tell, and Golfweek will have plenty more on Cabot Saint Lucia in the coming months. In the meantime, just take in the incredible photos below of the two strings of golf holes closest to the ocean at Point Hardy.

Keep in mind with the following photos that the course is still in grow-in and that several holes haven’t been grassed yet, so brown areas on greens and fairways seen in these photos are completely expected as the grass takes root. The bunkers have not yet been filled with sand and appear as natural scrapes in the photos. This is still very much a work in progress.

And to answer a few questions we know are coming:

  • Point Hardy will allow some versions of public-access play early on as its membership role is filled, with details still being determined. Eventually the course will be at least mostly private.
  • Yes, it will be expensive compared to most U.S. daily-fee prices. Green fees and stay-and-play options have yet to be set, but don’t expect it to be cheap on a site like this. A vehicular analogy: This course is a Lamborghini full of bravado and pulse-racing moments, not a four-cylinder Kia that simply gets the job done, and the pricing will be along those lines.
  • Will it be among the best courses in the world? There’s no way to know where it will sit on Golfweek’s Best rankings of top courses in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and the Atlantic Islands until our raters visit and offer their scores. But don’t be surprised to see Point Hardy very near the top of that list.
  • Cabot Saint Lucia includes a housing development, ranging from fairway villas all the way up to mansions priced at millions of dollars. Besides the golf, there will be a beach club in a gorgeous bay and a full slate of luxury amenities. There are no plans for a traditional hotel. Accommodations will be available as rental luxury residences and villas.
  • Point Hardy Golf Club will play to 6,616 yards with a par of 71.

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Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida, formerly World Woods, to add non-traditional layout named The 21

Formerly World Woods, the rebranded Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida will feature two full-size renovated layouts as well as the short course.

The Cabot Collection ­– the rapidly expanding Canadian golf developer and operator purchasing or building courses in areas ranging from Scotland to St. Lucia – has announced plans for a new 21-hole non-traditional course at its Florida property, Cabot Citrus Farms.

Formerly known as World Woods, with two courses originally designed by Tom Fazio and opened in 1994, Citrus Farms is seeing a complete renovation and rethinking as it becomes Cabot’s first property in the United States. About an hour’s drive north of Tampa International Airport, Cabot Citrus Farms is constructing a new clubhouse, luxury accommodations, practice facilities, shopping, dining, event spaces and new homes that go on sale in February.

The two renovated 18-hole courses, which feature sandy soil and somewhat surprising elevation features for Florida, are scheduled to open in December alongside the new short course.

The planned layout for The 21, a non-traditional short course at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida (Courtesy of Cabot Collection)

The old Pine Barrens 18-hole course is being redone by architect Kyle Franz and will be renamed Cabot Barrens (pictured atop this story). Franz is partnering with Mike Nuzzo and advisor Ran Morrissett on the renovation of the old Rolling Oaks layout into the rebranded Cabot Oaks. The architecture team of Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns originally was pegged to complete the Cabot Oaks layout, but Cabot switched to Franz, Nuzzo and Morrissett in 2022.

Both Pine Barrens and Rolling Oaks appeared in various years among the top 100 on Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses list, but over the past decade the property had lost much of its premium luster before Cabot purchased it in 2022 and announced plans for a complete and overdue overhaul.

Nuzzo will be in charge of design for the property’s short course, a non-traditional layout named The 21. Nuzzo was challenged to design as many holes as would fit in the 100 acres dedicated to the project, and he came up with 21 of them, many of them half-par holes, all of them promising interesting green complexes and a variety of strategies involved. The 21 also can be played as two distinct short courses instead of as one complete layout.

“We always want to keep the game fresh and exciting,” Ben Cowan-Dewar, CEO and co-founder of The Cabot Collection, said in a media release announcing The 21. “While (Bandon Dunes Golf Resort founder and early Cabot investor) Mike Keiser and I were looking at the terrain and courses we have in play, the idea was born to shape our 10-hole course and the 11-hole-course into a new 21-hole concept. The 21’s layout beckons golf aficionados who just can’t get enough of the rolling terrain in the Floridian countryside. This trifecta of courses at Cabot Citrus Farms will both challenge and delight players of all levels, with each paying homage to a handful of the most beloved places in the golf world.”

Check out several images of the redeveloping property below: