This mythical golf course is finally opening. Here’s how it became a reality

CAP ESTATE, St. Lucia — On a hilltop excessive above a distant nook of St. Lucia, a teenager in a sweat-stained shirt slowly masses meals onto a flatbed. A glimpse on the rusty platform reveals the boy has carried out effectively: There are vacuum-sealed packages of recent fish, baskets of greens and a few instances of chilly Piton beer.  

The contraption whirs to life, sending the products on a gradual descent into the arms of a small military of cooks ready beneath. A steamy afternoon has given option to an idyllic Caribbean night, and down on the backside of the hill, a personal beachside bungalow is prepping for a occasion.   

It’s sundown at a little sliver of paradise referred to as the Naked Fisherman, which is a hell of a unusual place to see the way forward for golf.

But a few of that future is right here — or a few miles from right here, at a place named Cabot St. Lucia. And from the deck on the Naked Fisherman, Bill Coore tells me the second he realized he’d found it.

It had occurred simply a day earlier, when Coore and his course-design associate, Ben Crenshaw, had discovered themselves on the fifteenth tee field at their newest Cabot design, Point Hardy Golf Club.

Crenshaw was admiring the expanse at 15, the primary of 4 cliffside stunners, when he stopped brief. He turned to Coore and requested for a photograph to ship to Julie, Crenshaw’s spouse.

Coore didn’t hassle making an attempt to stifle a smile.

“In all these years, that’s never happened before,” he instructed me on the porch, the identical smile plastered throughout his face.

“He must think it’s pretty good.”

CRENSHAW WASN’T ALONE.

I too discovered myself in St. Lucia in pursuit of one thing fairly good, and an oceanfront dinner was solely the primary glimpse of it.

There could be a dazzling array of acts to observe — bottles, excursions, meals, and, of course, seashores — earlier than we might see the principle occasion: a golf course set into a stretch of cliffside so stunning it would redefine our notion of Caribbean golf…and possibly common golf, too.

As the scent of grill smoke wafted into the air, the movers and shakers on the Naked Fisherman started to take their place. In one nook of the deck was Crenshaw, the two-time Masters champion and long-time course designer, clutching a Tito’s and soda full of a fats lemon wedge. In one other was Ben Cowan-Dewar, the golf developer behind Cabot, peeling away clothes after arriving on a late-afternoon flight from Toronto. In a third nook nonetheless, seated on an outdated wood bench removed from the noise, was Coore, the person who knew the place all of the our bodies had been buried.

Coore is Crenshaw’s artistic associate and, for those who imagine the individuals who care about these items, probably the most sensible course designers of the final a number of a long time. A toddler of rural North Carolina, Coore grew up a trendy golf success story, his ardour for the sport blooming from his working-class upbringing by advantage of entry to native gems like Pinehurst No. 2.

Coore discovered his method into the golf enterprise with none of the benefits owed to Crenshaw, apprenticing for fellow architect Pete Dye till he satisfied Crenshaw to open their very own design store. Despite his celeb, the famously genteel Crenshaw insisted the enterprise go by Coore’s title first, and so Coore & Crenshaw was fashioned.

The years since have been fruitful, with Coore and Crenshaw’s fingerprints on a whole bunch of the world’s greatest programs. Today, the pair has six authentic designs ranked in GOLF’s Top 100 within the World and has restored or renovated greater than a dozen others.

Word of a new Coore-Crenshaw design breeds childlike pleasure within the cultish world of course design. Witness the guests who posted to the web Zapruder-style pictures of a much-hyped new Coore-Crenshaw course in Oregon. When the pair’s work on that venture — the closely anticipated “Sheep Ranch” course at Bandon Dunes — was formally introduced, it got here as no shock. Most of the golf world had already seen it.

But nothing Coore and Crenshaw have ever carried out, not even Sheep Ranch, compares to the venture that introduced a pack of golf journalists to the Naked Fisherman. Not in measurement, scale, or most notably, hype. As Coore begins to inform me the story of Cabot St. Lucia, I can inform he is aware of it.

“We’ve had some truly extraordinary sites to work with. I mean, we’ve been so beyond fortunate,” Coore says. “But if we’re talking in the context of visual drama, this golf course, this site — it’s the most visually dramatic site we’ve ever worked with.”

Coore’s poker face is unhealthy — so unhealthy I’m starting to imagine it’s not a poker face in any respect. There’s a component of salesmanship to course design, the place the roles pay up entrance however careers are constructed on a regular stream of enterprise. By the time he reaches me, Coore has given the pitch for Cabot St. Lucia so many instances it’s burned into his eyelids.

But the longer he speaks, the extra agitated he appears. Truth is, he says, he and Crenshaw are in a distinctive place: They can afford to be picky. With Cabot St. Lucia’s jagged cliffs, gorgeous vistas and dreamy seashores, they didn’t want a salesman to generate curiosity — they wanted solely a photographer.

“Anybody who’s ever hit a golf ball in their life could design some of the holes out there,” he says. “I mean, seriously, it’s that beautiful.”

Coore orders a Piton from a server, and shortly he’s gesturing with the bottle as he talks by means of the property. There’s the 2nd gap, a bending, inland par-4 that will have a house at any Coore/Crenshaw course on this planet. The seventh, a brief cliffside par-3 that Coore says reminds him of the identical gap at Pebble Beach. The eighth, a pressured carry over a cliff that exposes gamers to the astonishing oceanfront — the place they are going to play eight holes — for the primary time.

The condensation from the beer is dripping down the criminal of Coore’s hand when he finally reaches the closing stretch, a staggering array of oceanside holes framed by a large rock formation. It was these holes, Nos. 15, 16, 17 and 18, that first spurred the eye of the golf world when whispers of Cabot St. Lucia surfaced in 2020. And it is these holes which have introduced the course all the best way into the No. 76 slot on this planet in GOLF’s newest Top 100 rankings, the best debut of any new authentic design.  

As he talks concerning the fifteenth, Coore’s eyes start to melt. He’s near saying the factor — that Cabot St. Lucia isn’t Pretty Good, it’s higher than that — however each time he begins, he falters.

I develop impatient.

“It feels like you’re scared to say how you really feel,” I say. “Why?”

Coore catches my gaze and his face stretches into a grin.

“Just wait,” he says. “You’ll see.”

THE GOLF WORLD HAS BEEN WAITING for a while now to see Cabot St. Lucia.

The course had been beneath development for near a 12 months when it first appeared on the golf web within the fall of 2020 — simply lengthy sufficient for the primary shiny renderings to permeate an in any other case barren touchdown web page. It was years from completion, even by probably the most aggressive estimates. Still, it didn’t take lengthy for the pictures to unfold like wildfire on social media, the place Cabot St. Lucia shortly became the game’s first true Covid child.

The time was good for the emergence of a golf Xanadu. Millions of latest gamers had flooded into the game, however journey restrictions had stored lots of them from venturing a lot past their backyards. Resorts throughout the trade had been battling twin forces: tee sheets had been naked however deposits had been lined up for years. Cabot St. Lucia’s cliffs, palm timber and crystalline waters had been the proper outlet.

Back in Cap Estate, actual life clashed with the Covid dream. Coore-Crenshaw had despatched down a trusted crew of land-shapers to execute the imaginative and prescient, however Covid lockdowns and island climate had induced delays.

Just when it appeared these points had been fading, a new situation arose. The seashores buffeting the golf course had been tied to an historic Amerindian burial floor, inflicting a stir among the many locals. Cabot commissioned an archeological knowledgeable to survey the world, doubtlessly dooming the venture, however the findings had been underwhelming.

The knowledgeable, famend archeologist Reginald Murphy, discovered that the positioning was “essentially destroyed” after a long time of native automotive site visitors and human use on the seashore. The website, or no matter nonetheless remained of it, was “99 percent eroded or washed away.” The venture was again on.

“It’s a bittersweet situation,” Murphy wrote. “You’re hoping for a grand find, but also … great in the sense that it allowed development to proceed.”

But the challenges weren’t carried out there. Once work finally started once more, Coore-Crenshaw’s workers realized many of the course’s grounds crew wanted further seasoning. Cabot St. Lucia could be solely the third course on the island, that means most of the employees accountable for bringing the place to life had by no means seen a golf course — not to mention labored at one.

Cabot St. Lucia had as soon as focused a February 2021 opening, however by the top of 2020 the development timeline had slowed significantly. The course didn’t begin its last overseed till the start of 2023, and play gained’t start till subsequent month.

“There are many times we’d walk out there and say, ‘Man, I don’t know if we’re going to pull this off,” Coore says now. “These guys that have worked here, I can’t tell you the fortitude and persistence they’ve had, because they’ve literally had to redo some of these things three, four or five times.”

That persistence has come hard-earned at instances, significantly for these working their first golf job. As I walked the positioning alone one afternoon, Damon Di Giorgio, the course’s well-regarded superintendent, stopped me to ask an uncommon favor.

“Did you write down anything nice about the course?” he requested.

I paused, confused.

“Anything at all?” he requested once more.

I instructed him I believed the property appeared stunning, and that the nuance from their months of labor was noticeable.

Di Giorgio smiled.

“I just want to be able to tell these guys something good,” he stated. “I want them to know all the work is going towards something.”

A number of fairways later, I stumbled on considered one of Di Giorgio’s lieutenants, Ed, sporting a heat smile and an outstretched hand.

Evidently, he’d already obtained the great phrase from Di Giorgio, and he wished to share a message of his personal.

“It feels good to be a part of something big.”

BILL COORE’S SPINE TINGLES as he walks up the third fairway.

As he reaches the inexperienced, his face scrunches like he smells one thing foul. After a gradual saunter to a greenside bunker, he turns to his longtime support Trevor Dormer to ship a message: one thing’s not proper.

“We need to work that shape back up toward the green,” he says, pointing at a three-inch hole within the sod and sand that is to not his liking.

Coore and Dormer spend a jiffy poking away on the bunker, deep in thought, earlier than Crenshaw arrives with a resolution in thoughts. After a few extra minutes of prodding, the group is completed, and the bunker appears … the identical, besides now all three males nod approvingly at it.

This, it appears, is the extent of obsession that separates the great course designers from the good ones — a high quality that Crenshaw explains merely.

“You try never to do the same thing twice,” he says. “Never, ever let them see you do the same thing twice.”

Innovation is a collaborative artwork for Coore and Crenshaw, who pour hours of effort into each stage of the construct. The creators can’t assist however infuse items of themselves into their work, a level that comes by means of within the greenside bunker. Crenshaw is a artistic genius and a diplomat; Coore is a perfectionist and commander. Either man alone could be a gifted designer, however collectively they’re a highly effective marriage of ambition and practicality.

Nowhere is this more true than at Cabot St. Lucia, the place Coore says the pair “moved mountains, literally,” to coax their design from the Volcanic rock beneath the course. That work was painstaking, however as we walked the course collectively, it was practically full. The outcome?

It’s good, and never simply Pretty Good. Really good.

There is an outdated analogy about golf programs as music, and that applies right here. Many comparable programs have been constructed like pop songs — their flash and polish belying a lack of substance. Cabot St. Lucia is not that. Indeed, Coore and Crenshaw’s shot at enjoying God has resulted in one thing heavenly, a symphony of magnificence and whimsy that ends with a knee-buckling crescendo. The low notes are thought-provoking, whereas the excessive notes are awe-inspiring. In a a part of the world recognized for hit-and-giggle resort golf, Cabot St. Lucia will make you weep.

Of course, good doesn’t imply excellent. There had been hiccups to constructing on a distant island that proved inescapable, and a few issues had been by no means absolutely solved. For one factor, the course stays wholly unwalkable, an oddity for a Coore/Crenshaw design. For one other, Cabot St. Lucia represents a departure from Coore and Crenshaw’s sometimes player-friendly strategy. Some holes might maybe be unfairly tough on gusty days, with prolonged pressured carries even from the ahead tees. At least one gap — just like the straight-uphill par-4 tenth, which feels extra apt for a billygoat than a golfer — nonetheless elicits groans from the designers.

“No. 10,” Crenshaw shudders after I ask which components of the construct stored him awake at evening. “That was the hardest test on this whole property.”

The course’s builders, Cabot, have had it barely simpler. Founder Ben Cowan-Dewar has realized it is not laborious to promote individuals on the view at Cabot St. Lucia, the place a residential group will quickly pop up. Buyers have flooded in from each route, an all-star forged that features Yankees’ first-baseman Anthony Rizzo.

“For a while, the conversion rate was literally 100 percent,” he says with a chuckle. “One hundred percent of the people who came here wanted to buy property.”

For now, entry to the course will probably be restricted to those that buy a house, the place listings vary from $2 to $8 million — a departure from the standard course-and-hotel mannequin Cabot has efficiently established in Nova Scotia, with comparable plans within the works in Florida and Scotland.

Still, Cabot St. Lucia could have availability for public play, and finally there are hopes to broaden entry even additional, maybe by means of one other on-property resort. Those choices, Cowan-Dewar says, will rely upon how the course is obtained.

Hype has been no drawback for Cabot St. Lucia, and neither has essential reception. But changing pleasure into guests might show difficult, significantly for an island that receives solely a small variety of flights every day, and a golf course that is one other two hours from the airport by automotive, virtually everything of which is spent on winding island roads.

But maybe one of the best indication of Cabot St. Lucia’s long-term success comes from the person accountable for the course’s existence. Cowan-Dewar, in spite of everything, was the one who guess golfers would flock to a distant chunk of the Canadian coast for tee instances — a guess that produced one of many world’s most celebrated resorts, Cabot Cape Breton.

Cowan-Dewar is making a comparable gamble at Cabot St. Lucia, however it’s clear he feels Coore and Crenshaw have helped him stack the deck.

“We’ve always believed to some extent, ‘If you build it, they will come,’” Cowan-Dewar says, summoning the outdated line from Field of Dreams.

“Here, I think they will.”

“SO I HEARD A LITTLE RUMOR…” I say to Ben Crenshaw from Point Hardy’s fifteenth tee.

The solar has begun to set on the horizon, illuminating the sky in a sensible shade of pink. Crenshaw and I are alone, admiring the view from a small speck of inexperienced in the course of a brilliant blue sea.

Out throughout the rocks is the green, and out past the green are three of the ultimate 4 ending holes, framed like a postcard. It was this vista that first whipped the golf world into a frenzy in late 2020. Now, the view has come to life, and Crenshaw can solely stare.

“I heard that you took a photo right here,” I say. “Something to send back home.”

Crenshaw reaches into his pocket for his telephone, then flips the display screen towards me. It’s the photograph his pal Bill took the day before today.

“Pretty remarkable, huh?” he says.

“Have you ever done that at another golf course?” I ask.

Crenshaw pauses, surveying the land round us. The late afternoon daylight has electrified the cliffs and the ocean and the course in sepia-toned streaks. The world is quiet aside from the sound of crashing waves and the mild breeze.

He flashes a smile.

“No, I don’t believe I have.”

You can attain James Colgan by electronic mail at james.colgan@golf.com