Drive on for more golf courses
“Fore” golf courses for Inverness?
On the heels of the latest honour for Cabot Links, co-founder Ben Cowan-Dewar spoke Friday about his plans, definite and tentative, for the future of the resort that has transformed the former mining community.
A par 3 course is the next project, and a third 18-hole course to join Cabot Links and Cabot Cliffs is being discussed.
“The success of Cliffs has certainly made us think about it and think very seriously,” said Cowan-Dewar. “The interim step that we will do is to build a par 3 course at Cliffs.”
“For people who aren’t playing 36 holes (a day), and for families and kids coming to the game, it offers a lot of variety,” CowanDewar said. “That is in the offing, and will be the next golf (course) we will likely build. We could call that our third course but I think there’s potential to build another 18-hole course. It’s not all the way there yet, we don’t have plans or routing or even an architect, but given the success of Cliffs, given that we’ve been able to draw golfers to this place … we’ll see where it goes from here.”
A third championship course would be big news in the global golf community, as golfers from all over the world are already flocking to Inverness throughout the summer. This year, PGA professionals Adam Scott and Mike Weir were there. It would also be a further boon to the local economy.
“(There is) no timeline to break ground on the par 3. Could be as early as this year, but we have a fair bit of work to finalize,” Cowan-Dewar added. “We do know the site, so we have that, and we have some preliminary routing.”
Cowan-Dewar got more good news this week when Architectural Digest magazine named, in no particular order, eight of “the world’s most beautiful golf courses,” and included Cabot, one of only two courses in North America on the list, along with Amanera in the Dominican Republic. “Architectural Digest is different from the golf publications and obviously one of the great ones,” he said. “It’s amazing, it’s one of those things that you don’t expect, you hope for the recognition we’ve received on the golf. It’s indicative of how beautiful Cape Breton is and how the folks that did the two courses brought that beauty to life. We’re pretty humbled to be mentioned by Architectural Digest.
“We always took the architecture of both the golf (courses) and the buildings extremely seriously, and I think in building something in such a rural environment we knew all facets had to be really special, so it’s amazing to see the recognition for that.”