Great Places in Golf - Cabot Links

One of my objectives with this blog is to make readers aware of the unique places in this great game, and to shame them into getting off their butts and going.  Some of these, as in this post, are places that I've not yet gone myself. 

So class, pull up a chair and settle in for today's discussion of Cabot Links.   Cabot is the brainchild of Canadian developer Ben Cowan-Dewar  and is located in the town of Inverness on the west coast of Cape Breton Island in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.  Geographically remote like Bandon Dunes, you can't get there from here, wherever here might be for you.

Possessed of the vision but lacking the scratch, Cowan-Dewar found the latter in the form of Mike Keiser, hired Canadian designer Rod Whitman, and the results are, by all accounts, sublime.  I'll refer you to the resort's image gallery and newsroom to form your own opinion.  But if you're a links lover such as myself, a bib might be in order...

And a brief aside to appreciate the irony involved in Canada's first proper links being located in a town named Inverness, settled by Highland Scots in the early 1800's.  The economy of the region was dependent upon coal until the last mine closed in the 1990's.  The local economy is now based on a combination of fishing and tourism, and one hopes that the expanding Cabot resort does for Inverness what Keiser's Bandon Dunes has done for its local economy.

So, why haven't I been there?  The normal reasons, time constraints, the bride's hip replacement and all....plus one other called Cabot Cliffs.  C-D and Keiser have hired Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw to build Cabot Cliffs, but it won't open for another two years, hence the dilemma.

Canadian golf writer and blogger Robert Thompson filed this report a while back in the Global Golf Post, and well, where did I put that bib?  Honestly you don't even need to read the text, just click through and check out the background photo.   

Though the text does provide interesting details on the routing, which covers a range of topography, ranging from seaside cliffs, meandering inland, traversing a small section of dunes and ending back on the oceanfront cliffs.   This description sounds reminiscent of their work on Bandon Trails, which started and ended among the dunes, but the bulk of which was in less interesting meadows.  

So, what's a links-loving fellow to do?  With Cabot Cliffs scheduled to open in 2015, the only logical course of action is to take no action at all, to wait until 2015 to venture North.  As this New York Times piece makes clear, more than the two Cabot courses await the intrepid traveler.  Most notable of these is Stanley Thompson's highly-rated Highland Links (which the purist in me must note is not a links), one of four Canadian courses (including Cabot Links) in Golf Digest's recent ranking of the top 100 courses in the world.

As to the absence of vegetables cited in the Times travelogue?  To the chagrin of my long-suffering bride, I consider that a feature, not a bug.