“There’s no wrong turn,” reads the slogan on Cape Breton’s marketing materials, and boy, is that ever true. In fact, it might be the most perfectly-pitched motto I’ve come across in nearly 20 years of travel writing.
Cruising north up the island’s Cabot Trail through Cape Breton Highlands National Park in a big tour bus — a deluxe Grayline coach well-appointed with snacks, beer and homemade Halloween cookies — revealed a visual buffet of whiplash-inducing maritime province views. In one direction we saw nothing but the Atlantic expanse, interrupted by craggy granite cliffs that (who knew?) are actually part of the Appalachian Range, stretching all the way to Newfoundland. We looked another and spied towering hills choked with autumn color that had peaked just a few days earlier, punctuated by tumbling waterfalls. And we looked forward and saw, in our mind’s eyes, the world’s latest golf-on-the-sea creation and new pride and joy of a town aptly named Inverness, Cabot Links.
We’d see it and play it for real soon enough. But first came a stunning three-hour tour through Cape Breton Highlands National Park, one of 42 scattered across the vast Canadian landscape; only Newfoundland’s two parks are further east. It’s a wonderland of varying temperate zones, from mountaintop bogs to dense forest to rocky coastline, and our guide, Donna Doucette, knew it meter by meter. Born in the French Acadian village of Cheticamp (home to its own golf course, Le Portage), Doucette’s encyclopedic grasp of the park’s every natural and historical nuance matched well with the free and smiling charm seemingly shared by each of Cape Breton’s 147,000 residents.
We made quick stops at Lakies Head, where pilot whales often make an appearance in the late summer months; headed up the Aspy River, which follows the island’s only earthquake fault and traditionally yields the best moose sightings; snapped some tasty above-it-all photos at Pleasant Bay; then turned south along the island’s western edge, where land meets the Atlantic’s Gulf of St. Lawrence in a dramatic series of tumbles and juts, bringing to mind the Oregon and Northern California coasts.
It’s all beautiful, all permanently stored in my memory bank and all proof positive that this relatively small chunk of nature — populated by artists, craftsmen, fishermen and motel and restaurant proprietors who shut down their businesses from November into May — is worthy of several days’ drive along its winding roads, especially if you’ve got the keys to a Ferrari or Corvette (both of which we saw negotiating curves further south along the trail). “Wouldn’t it be fun to take on these roads in one of those?” somebody said. Oh yeah, baby. Note to self: Rent a sportscar next time.
But we had golf on our minds, and we would get it in great draughts of linksland richness courtesy of Cabot Links: Not the five-in-five-out configuration the public has played since July, but the whole 18-hole lobster enchilada. Indeed, our group of intrepid journalists were among the first souls to see this much-awaited course in its entirety.
Word is owner Mike Keiser — he of Bandon Dunes fame, who jumped on board as an investor after setting foot and eye on these dunesy headlands five years ago — has played it a couple times as well, as has Edmonton-born architect Rod Whitman, who joined us for the first of our two rounds there. Recommended for the project by old college buddy Bill Coore (Ben Crenshaw’s design partner), Whitman ventured to Inverness in January 2005 to check out the site with Cabot Links managing director Ben Cowan-Dewar; by June of that year he had a routing plan and now, six years, several million dollars, some genius earthmoving work and plenty of Keiser influence later, his star creation is all but ready for its public close-up. After some additional drainage and bunker work over the winter months and additional grow-in next spring, the course will officially open July 1, 2012. Ground has also been broken for a 48-room lodge to match the existing two-story clubhouse that holds a small pro shop, bar and excellent restaurant whose floor-to-ceiling windows look out on the 18th green and the crumpled, windswept layout beyond, with the Atlantic itself no more than a long par 4 away.
Sound familiar? The singular Keiser vision that reaped a revolution at Bandon Dunes is alive here, too — though with so much Scottish and Irish influence woven into Cape Breton culture, Cabot Links is far from a carbon copy. It’s its own animal.
“To Mike Keiser’s credit, he pretty much let us do what we wanted up here,” said Whitman, who played collegiate golf with Coore at Sam Houston State and still has the smooth, efficient move of a low-handicapper. “He gave us a small budget to work with the first year. We only had a small crew of three or four of us. We reworked all the holes at one time, and that’s when Mike got really excited, said, ‘you know, this is gonna be good.’ He’s a good owner, and good owners are hard to find.”
Added Ian McNeil, who handles Cabot Links’ communications, “I think Mike Keiser will keep building great links courses until the day he dies.”
That’s a safe bet. Nobody’s better than Keiser at seeking out and nailing down prime linksland. But it’ll take his best effort to beat what he’s got here. Cabot Links is not only as good as promised in early reviews, it’s better, carrying in its design DNA the unmistakable and unforced elements of the greatest old-school (read: Scottish and Irish) courses, from St. Andrews to Carnoustie, Royal County Down to Waterville. And there’s a solid nod to that modern standard-bearer, Bandon Dunes, too; holes 15 and 16 are as fine a beachside pair of 4-pars as anything at the famed Oregon coast resort, or, for that matter, anyplace else in the world’s 246-course “true links” canon (according to a recent book of the same name, which already includes Cabot in that rarefied family).
Whitman got into the design game at Austin Country Club in 1980 after Pete Dye pretty much put the project into the young Canadian’s lap. He has since worked with Coore here and there and counts Saguaro at We-Ko-Pa (a top Crenshaw-Coore product) and Talking Stick in Arizona among his best work. He packs so much wild personality into Cabot Links that it simply begged for inclusion with the big boys from almost the first shovel-turn. The result is simple bliss: “Day-in, day-out, it’s gonna be fun to play,” Whitman offers. “Sometimes you get a course that’s just too doggone hard. Here we’ll have a little of both.”
I also found a few surprises tossed in among the pot bunkers and shaggy fescue, including the delightful inland interlude of holes 10 and 11 — a lovely mid-range par that lays perfectly along a low ridge just below the town proper, followed by perhaps the greatest cape hole built in the past 50 years. No. 11 wraps around a tidal lagoon lined with dense wetlands to an elevated green that seems to ooze oh-so-naturally from a grassy dune, with a small marina of fishing boats as its backdrop. Close to reachable from the forward tees but a pure beast from the backs especially with a prevailing southwest gale that push tee shots toward bramble-studded dunes to the right, it’s a model of strategic balance and simply exhilarating to play.
“It’s a hole where a lot of pictures will be taken,” said head pro Joe Robinson, who spent 39 years at Highlands Links. “That hole, 15 and 16 will be signature holes. I knew this project was going to be special, and I just wanted to be part of it.”
He’s not alone. Inverness’ denizens have embraced it from the start, and many of them now work there or will in the future — including several retired schoolteachers who’ve traded in their blackboards for caddy's bibs. “I’m loving it,” said Eddie, who taught middle school science for decades and lugged my sticks for both rounds.
I loved it, too. Cabot Links deepened my links palate and left me wanting more. Sounds like a recipe for success, eh?
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