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.
A 400-year-old castle. Crisscross fairways. Stunning ocean views reaching from water’s edge to higher and farther back. A giant rolling hill. A front nine loaded with par 4s, then a more conventional back nine with two par 3s and two par 5s. Expect humps, bumps, hollows and fun bounces, all along the northern Scottish coastline not far from Inverness.
Tom Doak’s routing for the yet-to-be-named second course at Cabot Highlands was released by the resort’s Canadian-based ownership group this week. It’s a sure bet the famed American designer utilized his vast knowledge of Scottish golf design – accumulated through years of on-the-ground study of the country’s greatest natural links – to create this much-anticipated layout that should open to preview play in 2024 and fully in 2025.
The routing plan for the new Tom Doak-designed course at Cabot Highlands in Scotland shows No. 1 to the left before the layout crosses an estuary and plays to a far point along the coast to the right, then returns to an 18th hole that crisscrosses the first hole. (Courtesy of Cabot)
There’s just one thing: The second course at Cabot Highlands won’t sit on traditional links land. Instead of a totally natural golf site, this property has been farmed for decades, much of it pressed smooth as it rolls past the castle and down that gorgeous hill toward an estuary and the Moray Firth beyond.
That means Doak and his Renaissance Golf Design team have been tasked with creating much of the shot-making drama. On a piece of land that has seen farm tractors instead of greens mowers, they must interject the fun and intricate terrain features that make up the best of Scottish golf.
Doak, of course, knew this when he accepted the job. His stated goal from the beginning: Take what the land offers, don’t overcook anything and, when in doubt, take a drive along the coast for a design refresher at some of the best links courses in the world. It might be St. Andrews to the east, or Royal Dornoch on the opposite side of the firth. Just along this little section of seaside, there’s a wide sampling of classic Scottish links courses to provide inspiration.
Tom Doak discusses his new course at Castle Stuart/Cabot Highlands near Inverness, Scotland. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
“The good thing about trying to do this in Scotland instead of in Florida is, if you’re ever not sure, you drive right over there (pointing out window), or drive up north, and go have a look at a few other courses,” Doak said during a tour of the land in late 2022 as he worked on the routing. “You know, I think most architects, we do too much. The things that are cool about the contouring here (in Scotland) is that it’s small scale and it’s wrinkly, but there are large expanses of fairly flat stuff in with that. It doesn’t just keep going with jittery contours forever. Even the most complex golf courses have big areas of relatively flat areas. …
“You think about it, we’re working on something now that we’re trying to bring in some links contours, so it’s almost like we’re going around and looking at things and sampling (other courses). Like, ‘We could do something like that little stretch somewhere else.’ “
Gil Hanse and Mark Parsinen designed the original 18 at what was then named Castle Stuart in Scotland. Rebranded as Cabot Highlands in 2022, the highly ranked layout plays along the Moray Firth. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
A similar recipe already has proved successful at Cabot Highlands, which was known as Castle Stuart until 2022 when Cabot purchased it. The original course on the property – which is still called Castle Stuart Golf Links – was designed on similarly farmed land, and that cliffside layout by Gil Hanse and Mark Parsinen that opened in 2009 has climbed to No. 4 on Golfweek’s Best ranking of modern courses in Great Britain and Ireland. It’s a layout that’s never feels overdone, with manmade features that appear natural in their jaw-dropping setting.
Doak’s course is intended to complement that original layout and secure for the resort a spot on even more must-play lists.
The routing map shows seven par 4s on the front with an 18-hole par of 72, the layout sweeping from a high point across land formerly occupied by the driving range, down past the castle then around and over the estuary. It extends to a point that, from the clubhouse, appears to be miles away across a small bay. It’s an out-and-back routing that doesn’t return to the clubhouse until No. 18, the line of play for which crisscrosses that of No. 1 in one huge and shared fairway. For much of the journey, Moray Firth and the surrounding mountains will provide plenty of eye candy.
And Cabot isn’t stopping with the new course. The company is pumping in capital to make the entire property even more appealing, with an expansion of the clubhouse underway and new real estate opportunities.
“In the historic home of golf, we looked to Tom to create something special, and perhaps unconventional by modern standards,” Ben Cowan-Dewar, CEO and co-founder of Cabot, said in the media release announcing the routing. “His vision of resurrecting an old true-links style course will serve as a great complement to the beloved (and original) Castle Stuart Golf Links. We hope to create an awe-inspiring destination anchored by incredible golf that will stand the test of time for generations to come.”
From the Scottish Highlands around to St. Andrews, a series of true links astonish with variety, playability and charm.
Where to begin?
That is not a rhetorical question. When laying out a bucket-list golf trip to Scotland, it’s a very serious query, part of a series of such questions that will follow you around the country. Where to begin? Which course next? Toughest of all: Which courses can I bear to skip?
Headed to St. Andrews? There’s a lot more on tap than the famed Old Course, 30 times the site of the British Open – ahem, Open Championship, thank you very much. Will you play the New Course, which seems a misnomer, seeing how it was built by Old Tom Morris in 1895? How about the Jubilee? The Castle, which having opened outside town in 2008 is the newest of the seven courses managed by the St. Andrews Links Trust? Maybe sample a handful of the other layouts not far from the Home of Golf?
Headed into the Highlands for a dream round at Royal Dornoch? Everyone on other courses, on the way and on social media will tell you that you can’t skip nearby Brora (I didn’t) or Tain or Golspie (I missed both, but I already am planning to return). Scouting a classic links trip to Aberdeen? You can’t miss classic links such as Royal Aberdeen, or Murcar Links or Cruden Bay or a handful of others. The options are lined up along the coast. All the coasts of Scotland, actually.
Cabot Highlands, formerly known as Castle Stuart, in Scotland (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Headed east? You’ll be told not to miss the courses to the west. Looking north? Don’t miss those gems to the south. Whichever point of the compass you choose and whatever address you plug into Google Maps, there will be dozens of opportunity costs – all those suggestions are correct, even if they create a totally unmanageable itinerary for a traveling golfer on a weeklong holiday.
Weeks after my recent trip, when playing with a group of Golfweek’s Best course raters in California, I barely could finish a sentence about where I played before the questions poured in: Did you play this one, and what about that one? We all process the world through the lenses of our own experiences, and that’s especially true when judging the courses somebody else is, or is not, playing.
The 18th green of the Old Course at St. Andrews sits close enough to the street and town that the afternoon shadows of old buildings stretch across the putting surface. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Such was the quandary when I started planning this trip to Scotland. I was lucky, because I knew where I would begin. American course designer Tom Doak is building a new course at Castle Stuart near Inverness, which is being rebranded as Cabot Highlands after its recent acquisition by Canadian company Cabot. I would begin there to hear Doak discuss his plans as well as to sample the original course at the resort.
But from there? I had options. Too many options. The names of famous Scottish links courses roll on and on, and it would take months to see even half of what I had in mind. I had only 12 days on the ground, so I enlisted the help of course booking provider Golfbreaks and the local experts at VisitScotland.com to help set up a trip that would venture high into the Highlands before swinging back down the coast, east to Aberdeen and eventually into St. Andrews.
Scotland, of course, is where the game as we know it was invented, and the best of it is all about links golf in particular. Firm, fast and sometimes almost entirely natural – I coveted the links experience. Of the 550 or so total golf courses in Scotland, fewer than 90 might be classified as true links, depending on one’s given definition – there is great debate among academics and clubhouse drunks about what constitutes a proper links. On this trip I was lucky enough to experience 11 examples. Each was distinctive, and don’t dare think of links golf as some uniform game, because it is the definitive opposite of that. The conditions might be similar, but each layout shines on its own, each bouncy shot promising something unexpected.
Street view in St. Andrews (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
I played courses that are famed worldwide, and several that are less known outside Scotland. I played in sunshine and rain, wind and calm. I played well, and I played poorly. The only constants were the courses, the terrain and coastlines flashing through my exhausted head each night in whatever accommodations I had scheduled. The trip included planes, trains, buses, shuttles and a blue Skoda SUV – “Keep left, keep left, keep left,” I had to remind myself at the start of each drive on skinny, winding roads, because I couldn’t bear the thought of missing my next round of golf due to something so mundane as a car crash.
There were a lot of miles, a lot of different beds, a lot of nerves in the car. So many good courses, too many bad swings. And it was all perfect.
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The links layouts dominate the rankings of the best modern courses in England, Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
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The members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 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. Then each course is ranked against other courses in Great Britain and Ireland to produce the final rankings.
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.
We know that most golf fans will spend the next week and more dreaming of hitting the Scottish links, so we here at Golfweek are doing everything within our power to make that dream a bit more real.
Last week we gave you some of the best U.K. golf vacations out there, but this week our focus narrows to Scotland and the 10 best courses that the home of golf has to offer.
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Want to play St. Andrews, Carnoustie, and Royal Troon all on the same trip? Yeah…we thought so.
The 2022 British Open is just weeks away and the entire golf world is gearing up to go back home to The Old Course at St. Andrews.
We will all be glued to the coverage of the 150th Open Championship later this month, and most golf fans will daydream about playing St. Andrews and that fantasy golf vacation they’ve been putting off for years.
It’s time to turn those daydreams into reality. Along with our friends from Golfbreaks, Golfweek has compiled five spectacular U.K. golf vacations including trips to England, Northern Ireland and Scotland to play some of the oldest and most famous courses in the world.
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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.”
