Tag: Keith Rhebb

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.

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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.

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

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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Forest Dunes adds fun, par-3 Short Course in Michigan

The short course joins a growing list of fun, creative par-3 courses around the world that provide a break from longer traditional courses.

Forest Dunes already had two of the best golf courses in Michigan, but now there’s even more reason to visit the resort in Roscommon.

Forest Dunes this month opened its new Short Course, a 10-hole, 1,135-yarder designed by Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns, the designers of the popular Winter Park Golf Course near Orlando.

The Short Course is situated between Forest Dunes’ original course designed by Tom Weiskopf, which ranks No. 3 in Michigan on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list, and the Loop, a reversible Tom Doak design that ranks No. 4 in the state. The holes measure between 65 and 110 yards.

Forest Dunes Short Course (Courtesy of Forest Dunes)

“We essentially had carte blanche from (Forest Dunes owner Lew Thompson), which was awesome, and really the only way we could get the project completed in time,” Rhebb, who also works frequently as a shaper for Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, said in a news release. “You don’t often get the chance to get super creative when designing courses, but with the Short Course we really had the opportunity to have some fun with it. Lew wanted it to be fun and always engaging, and we were able to express that in the design.”

Forest Dunes Short Course (Courtesy of Forest Dunes)

The news release said “the Short Course’s creative greens were constructed to funnel balls toward pin locations, improving the likelihood of holes-in-one, while a few tee shots tempt players to make use of strategic slopes and banks instead of flying it in the air. The greens showcase a variety of subtle shapes, many being bowl-shaped and some resembling catcher’s mitts or tabletops.”

Forest Dunes Short Course (Courtesy of Forest Dunes)

Thompson said in the release that music, bare feet and eightsomes are all fair game on the new par-3 course if that’s what it takes to make the game more accessible and fun.

Forest Dunes Short Course (Courtesy of Forest Dunes)

“When you come to Forest Dunes, we want you to have a good time,” Thompson said. “What Keith and Riley have built is bringing a new life and energy to the property. It’s going to bring people together and make their time here more enjoyable.”

Adding short courses is a growing trend for operators of premium golf destinations, with the 13-hole, par-3 Preserve at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon and the nine-hole, par-3 Cradle at Pinehurst in North Carolina serving as prime examples. The shorter courses can attract families and novices as well as serve as a fun break from larger, traditional courses. Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, home to Cabot Cliffs and Cabot Links, also recently opened a new par-3 course, a further example of the trend.

Stuck in a tropical paradise: Course shaper Keith Rhebb sits tight in Saint Lucia

In normal times, most travelers would be chomping at the bit to visit Saint Lucia, the island nation that is part of the Windward Islands marking the border between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Mountains, beaches, not too crowded. … who …

In normal times, most travelers would be chomping at the bit to visit Saint Lucia, the island nation that is part of the Windward Islands marking the border between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Mountains, beaches, not too crowded. … who wouldn’t want to go? It’s a tropical paradise 1,500 miles southeast of Miami.

That would be in normal times, not since the coronavirus pandemic teed off on the world’s travel industry.

Keith Rhebb, a golf course shaper who frequently works for the design team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, is currently stuck in paradise. He’s helping build a course at the new Cabot Saint Lucia, and with work shut down on the island to only essential tasks as the nation’s government tries to prevent any new cases of coronavirus, he’s biding his time until he can climb back onto his bulldozer and return to shaping the course.

“One guy on a dozer out in a field, I’m not sure what the risk would be, but we’re following the guidelines,” Rhebb said in a call via Facetime audio, one of his best ways of staying in touch with family and coworkers in the U.S.  “There’s no traffic coming in, there’s no traffic going out. The government has been really proactive on that, making sure everyone is trying to be safe here.

“I think they’re doing the right thing. We’re just kind of abiding by all the social distancing, washing hands, being mindful of not just going out and being out and about. We’re basically staying put, not going out and lining up in the street for KFC. Life is just continuing on here. There’s still food on the shelves. They are limiting the amount of people that can be in the store at one time. There wasn’t a run on toilet paper or anything like going on in the States, you know.”

Rhebb said local news reports have indicated three cases of coronavirus on the island: Two people from the United Kingdom were infected and later flown off the island, and one local resident was sick but has recovered. All travel to and from the island is effectively shut down until April 5.

The last flight out was this past Saturday, and he chose to stay on the island so he could return to work as soon as possible. After arriving in Saint Lucia on Feb. 24, he had planned to return to his home in Winter Park, Florida – his design credits include the Winter Park 9, a short course that ranks as the 27th best in Florida on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play – on Thursday for a break.

“Basically, if I took that option to leave on Saturday, I knew I wouldn’t be able to know when I could come back and nothing would happen on the site,” he said. “Talking with my wife, she’s working from home and has everything she needs there. This is kind of what we’ve always known, a long-distance-type thing. She said, you’re probably safer there than traveling back to Florida and having to go through the airports in Florida. So we just made the decision for me to stay put.

“We’re working a plan to get things started. There’s plenty of work to do. That’s the reason I stayed here, because I wanted to be productive to keep things going.”

Rhebb is the only Coore-Crenshaw shaper left on the island, staying in an apartment in Rodney Bay in what he described as a popular shopping area. A handful of other contractors working on the course are there, too. He said there aren’t many Americans left on the island, where about 65 percent of the gross domestic product is reliant on tourism, according to the CIA World Factbook. With no cruises arriving and the airports closed, things are certainly quiet.

“I’m a creative person, and my outlet is kind of being creative and building stuff and wanting to be productive,” Rhebb said. “I know that’s kind of a first-world problem, so I don’t want to complain too much.”

Rhebb – whose work in the past year has included stints at Kapaulua’s Plantation Course in Hawaii and the new Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes in coastal Oregon – described the course, Cabot Point, as “spectacular.” The site has eight holes that directly contact the coastline, and the ocean is in view from all 18.

“The coastal holes are off the charts,” he said. “And personally, I’m really excited about these inland holes that aren’t right on the coastline. They have their own character and beauty. They might not be right on the ocean, but they’re just as spectacular.”

But for now, he’s staying away. He said that judging by what he sees outside his apartment, life appears to be continuing just fine on the island. He sees people lined up for fast-food takeout or visiting a nearby bank, but he and the other contractors are “just staying put for the most part.” He goes for jogs and has been taking photos, and despite many travelers’ fantasy of life in a beach bar, he’s staying away from beer.

“You find appreciation for the things you kind of took for granted earlier,” he said. “You take it day by day. Trying to make a plan for even four days out, you know it’s all going to change. You can just take time to put things in perspective and not waste energy on things that aren’t positive.”

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Kapalua’s Plantation Course ready for PGA Tour pros with restored and speedy surfaces

Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw finished a project at Kapalua, where thatch buildup had slowed the roll in the fairways.

The PGA Tour players in this week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions are in for a firm, fast and bouncy experience, the result of a nine-month renovation project to Kapalua’s Plantation Course that restored much of the original intent of designers Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.

The debut course of that now-famous design duo opened in 1991, playing some 400 feet up the side of a mountain in Maui, Hawaii. The coastal course features wide fairways and dramatic slopes, with long views over Honolua and Mokuleia bays. The course has become a staple of the PGA Tour, blasting snow-bound golfers back on the mainland with views of sunshine, tropical breezes and the occasional breaching whale.

The Plantation Course played firm and fast for years, but the venerable track – rated No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access layouts – had started to show its age. Thatch buildup had slowed the roll in the fairways, and regular maintenance and top-dressing of the greens had softened some contours and steepened others, leaving fewer reasonable locations for pin positions.

Coore and Crenshaw returned to start a project shortly after the 2019 Tournament of Champions to restore the firm conditions and recreate more hole locations on the greens. Working with management company Troon Golf, which operates the Kapalua courses, and with former golf professional and current Golf Channel personality Mark Rolfing, Coore and Crenshaw rebuilt the greens and bunkers, restored tees and re-grassed the entire property. The course reopened in November.

The second hole at Kapalua’s Plantation Course during restoration (Courtesy of Keith Rhebb)

The course routing is the same, but the fairways are now Celebration Bermuda grass and the greens are TifEagle Bermuda. The 93 bunkers also were rebuilt with a capillary concrete liner system to help handle heavy rains, with several bunkers being reduced in size while others were expanded, all with more natural shapes and edges.

Keith Rhebb, owner of Rhebb Golf Design and a frequent contractor who does course-shaping work for Coore and Crenshaw, spent about three months at Kapalua. Having worked on top-rated courses such as Cabot Cliffs in Nova Scotia, Streamsong Red in Florida and the soon-to-be-opened Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes in Oregon, Rhebb said the work at Kapalua was all intended to restore the original playing conditions, where wide fairways offered strategic options but also could play tighter because a golf ball might keep trundling along until it reached trouble.

“The biggest thing was, the ball wasn’t rolling in the fairways as much,” Rhebb said. “The length of the course, for (resort guests) coming to play, it was just getting way too difficult. It had more to do with the conditioning of the fairways – the thatch was slowing the ball down. With the new Bermuda grass, Celebration, it can get a better surface to it to get the firmness back in the fairways. They really de-thatched the fairways, got almost back to basically the dirt and sprigged right back into the fairways.”

Coore and Crenshaw’s assembled teams included Dave Axland, Jimbo Wright, Jeff Bradley and Riley Johns, as well as 15 to 20 contractors. The group faced tight deadlines to finish everything in time for this week’s Tournament of Champions, with frequent logistical and operational challenges tied to renovating a course on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

“You could really feel that pressure because there’s a hard date,” Rhebb said. “All kinds of things could have happened, created big issues. They were shipping in the grass sprigs from another island that were, I think, in refrigerated shipping trailers. There could have been one delay in a shipment, and everything would have been off. It took a lot of logistics and planning to make sure everything came together. …

“Andrew Rebman (Kapalua’s director of agronomy) and his crew pulled it all off, got everything grown in and ready, and kudos to them. I can’t even imagine the amount of pressure for them, having construction going on and having to wait on us before they could get to work, knowing they’re going to host a tournament that’s going to be on TV in January. Andrew, with his skill set, he’s going to have that place dialed in.”

A Sand Pro used to finish greens during the restoration of Kapalua’s Plantation Course (Courtesy of Keith Rhebb)

Rhebb said several of the greens had developed slopes of as much as 4 or 5 degrees in areas, rendering them unpinnable as the surfaces approached Tour speeds because balls wouldn’t stop rolling. Those slopes were the result of nearly 30 years of top-dressing with sand and other common maintenance procedures that buried some contours and steepened others. The green contours also no longer properly flowed into the contours outside the greens.

The crew utilized laser scanning and 3D computer modeling before starting work, then recreated slopes of around 3 degrees that extended playable green surfaces and opened up new hole locations.

“When we cored out those greens, it was almost like the rings of a tree. You could see the years of buildup,” Rhebb said. “What should be about 18 inches at most of the green surface mix, there was in spots two feet or more of mix in the greens. With almost 30 years of top-dressing, it was just time to come back and renovate these greens.”