Cabot Saint Lucia – Syndication Server

Cabot steps up as world player with opening of new courses at Citrus Farms, Saint Lucia

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.

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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.

See it to believe it: Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw reach deep into their bag of design tricks to make Cabot Saint Lucia play as well as it looks

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.”

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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.

“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.

Imagine any of the most scenic seaside golf courses in the world. Cypress Point or Pebble Beach in California, any of the layouts at Bandon Dunes in Oregon, Royal Dornoch and a handful of other Scottish or Irish heavyweights, a slew of Mexican and Caribbean beauties. Point Hardy Golf Club is a match for any of them, as far as visuals and proximity to salt water.

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?

“Playability, playability, playability,” Coore said.

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.

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“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.”

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 selects course designers to renovate the former World Woods in Florida

Younger designers have chance to shine on their own at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida.

Cabot, the developer and operator of several golf resorts around the world, has selected the golf architects who will tackle the Canadian company’s latest venture in Florida – and several younger designers have a chance to shine.

Kyle Franz and the team of Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns will renovate the two 18-hole courses at Cabot Citrus Farms, the former World Woods, an hour’s drive north of Tampa. Cabot also tagged Mike Nuzzo to build a short course, a new nine-hole course and the practice facilities.

There had been much speculation among golf architecture fans of who might land the jobs to redesign the two 18-hole layouts originally built by Tom Fazio nearly 30 years ago. Cabot announced in January that it had purchased the 1,200-acre property with plans to reimagine the entire experience. Those initiatives include real estate development, retail operations, restaurants, fitness and spa amenities, communal gathering points and a farmer’s market.

World Woods Cabot Citrus Farms — Pine Barrens at World Woods in Florida, which will be turned into Cabot Citrus Farms (Courtesy of Cabot/Evan Schiller)

Cabot, co-founded by Ben Cowan-Dewar and Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser, also owns Cabot Cape Breton, site of Cabot Cliffs and Cabot Links, the two highest-ranked courses on Golfweek’s Best Modern Canadian Courses list. The company plans to open Cabot St. Lucia, with 18 holes designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, this year in the Caribbean. The company also is building Cabot Revelstoke, an 18-hole layout by Rod Whitman scheduled to open in 2024, in the Monashee and Selkirk mountain ranges near the city of Revelstoke in British Columbia in western Canada.

Franz will tackle the renovation of the Pine Barrens 18 at the former World Woods, which at one point was ranked by Golfweek’s Best among the top 50 modern courses in the U.S. but by 2021 had fallen to No. 172 on that list and No. 5 in Florida on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access layouts.

“Cabot Citrus Farms is going to be an extraordinary destination, and we are thrilled to be a part of this effort,” Franz said in a statement announcing the news. “Our goal for Pine Barrens is to take its dramatic, sandy land and maximize it into one of the most spectacular golf courses in the region and country.

“In our view, the perfect formula for Pine Barrens combines rugged sandscapes and vegetation that meld with the natural topography, classical contouring and creative short-grass recovery shots around the greens, wider corridors of play and multiple strategic routes to the pin, fascinating grassing patterns and varied tee box placements so that players get a fresh look at the different options every time they tee it up.”

Franz worked for years for famous designers such as Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. His solo efforts in recent years include such highly acclaimed courses as Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Southern Pines – all near Pinehurst, North Carolina – and the Minikahda Club in Minneapolis.

Rhebb and Johns will renovate the Rolling Oaks 18, which ranked No. 22 among Florida’s public-access layouts in 2021. The pair has worked for years on projects with Coore and Crenshaw, and their independent efforts include the much-heralded Winter Park Country Club near Orlando, Point Grey Golf and Country Club in Vancouver and the new Bootlegger par-3 course at Forest Dunes in Michigan. Rhebb, in particular, has spent much of the past two years working for Coore and Crenshaw at the new Cabot Saint Lucia.

Nuzzo’s largest success has been Wolf Point Ranch, which Golfweek’s Best ranks as No. 7 among private courses in Texas. As with all the architects selected to rework the former World Woods, he expressed his excitement to work in such a sandy site that allows for extreme creativity.

“Both the site and the client are essential to creating a special golf course,” he said in the media release announcing the designers. “With Cabot Citrus Farms, we have the best of both worlds, a natural sandy site and an innovative, forward-thinking client. Having fewer traditional golf constraints for our portion of the project presents an extra layer of opportunity for creativity. We’re looking forward to seeing the whole project come together!”

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Your 2021 picks: Our top 10 golf course architecture/travel stories (No. 1 is a famous track reincarnated)

There are some really beautiful courses featured on this list of the top golf travel stories.

As you’re relaxing during the holiday break, taking stock of your year in golf and thinking about where you might play in 2022, we figured this would be a good time to run through the numbers and tally up which travel stories drew your attention.

For the final days of 2021, we’re offering up a snapshot of the top 10 stories from each of Golfweek’s most popular sections, including travel, the PGA and LPGA tours, instruction and amateur golf. Here’s what we’ve already counted down.

Here’s a look at the top 10 golf travel stories, as clicked on by you (we should note, this doesn’t include lists, which will be featured on Friday):

Lusk: Five new golf courses I can’t wait to see in 2022, from Nebraska to New Zealand

Landmand, Te Arai, among others have golf architecture fans champing at the bit for 2022 to arrive.

After a decade of course closings dominating the headlines starting with the economic downturn in 2008, architects have been busier moving earth over the past several years. Coast to coast as well as abroad, several top-tier layouts have come online from noted architects – think Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, even Tiger Woods.

This new year promises more of the same, with the following five new courses being among those I can’t wait to see in 2022.

In keeping with recent development trends, these courses aren’t necessarily close to major population centers. Only one of them – the East Course at PGA Frisco – is near a big city, situated as it is on the northern outskirts of Dallas. The other four on this list? You’ll need planes, trains, automobiles or maybe a boat, and definitely a passport.

Doesn’t matter. Great golf is worth any travel. So in no particular order, here are five new courses I want to sink my nubby spikes into during 2022.

Golfweek’s Best 2021: Top 50 Modern International Courses

From Cabot Cliffs to Tara Iti, Casa de Campo to Old Head, these are the top International Modern Courses built outside the U.S. since 1960.

Welcome to the initial Golfweek’s Best Modern International Courses list with the highest-rated courses outside the United States that were built in or after 1960. (Tara Iti in New Zealand is pictured atop this story.)

This is the first year for this International Modern list, and it is comprised of thousands of individual ratings of courses around the world. Next week we will publish the Classic Courses version, shining a spotlight on the best international courses built before 1960.

Each year we publish many lists, with the U.S.-based Top 200 Modern Courses and the accompanying Top 200 Classic Courses lists being the premium offerings. Also extremely popular and significant are the Best Courses You Can Play State by State and Best Private Courses State by State.

The 800-plus members of our ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final rating for each course, which is then ranked against other courses to produce the final lists.

Old Head of Kinsale Golf Links (David Cannon/Getty Images)

Each course is listed with its average rating next to the name, the location, the year it opened and the designers. After the designers are several designations that note what type of facility it is.

There are a few wonderful courses that don’t appear on this list because they haven’t received enough votes from raters. This most often happens at hard-to-reach private courses that don’t allow much guest play. One such example would be Playa Grande in the Dominican Republic, a stunning Robert Trent Jones Sr. layout that has been renovated by Rees Jones but that hasn’t received enough votes to make this international list. Given time and more votes, it’s entirely possible this seaside layout will make a strong climb into the various course rankings.

Key

r: resort course
d: daily fee
p: private course
t: tour course
re: real estate
* Some international private courses allow limited outside play. Contact the courses indicated for more information on their guest policies.