Cabot St. Lucia: Made for the Game

A WORLD-CLASS COURSE HAS ARISEN ON DRAMATIC CARIBBEAN ISLAND TERRAIN THAT CRIED OUT FOR GREAT GOLF. By Robert Beringela

In January 2016, Canadian businessman Ben Cowan-Dewar traveled from his home in wintry Toronto to the balmy shores of the Caribbean, but sunbathing was the last thing on his mind. The co-founder and operator of Cabot Cape Breton, a marquee golf resort in Nova Scotia, Cowan-Dewar was looking for a new property to develop, a seasonal offset to the gem he’d built in the Great White North. Aside from good weather, he had two key criteria in mind.

“There had to be plenty of flights, so it was easy to access from major population centers,” Cowan-Dewar says. “And it had to be a spectacular site for golf.”

Easy to say.

Tough to find.

For all its natural beauty—the sugary beaches, the turquoise waters—much of the Caribbean has flat terrain, not exactly catnip for architecture nerds, while most of the world’s top courses lie on land with compelling wrinkles and rumples.

Cowan-Dewar searched for days, puddle-jumping from one island to the next, hoping to discover a spot that met his standards.

Then he found it.

It was, he says, “one of the greatest golf sites I’d ever seen, anywhere in the world.”

Perched at the northern tip of the island of St. Lucia (part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles), where the eastern Caribbean meets the Atlantic, on a peninsula known as Point Hardy, the property commanded nearly two miles of oceanfront. And the coastline, Cowan-Dewar says, “did everything you wanted it to do. It jutted in and out. It moved up and down. You played across coves. It was incredibly dramatic.”

So clearly did the site cry out for golf that someone had already tried to build a course on it. But that project, a design-in-themaking by Jack Nicklaus, had foundered in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. Now it was available, as naturally suited to the game as ever.

“I knew immediately that I wanted to do it,” Cowan-Dewar says. “Which, of course, is when the hard work begins.”

A little more than six years later, that effort is about to bear fruit. One of the most anticipated courses of 2022, Cabot St. Lucia is set to open late this year, greeting golfers with a rare marriage of place and pedigree: the first Caribbean design by the vaunted architecture duo of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who started from scratch on the property, creating an entirely new routing.

St. Lucia is a volcanic island, craggy and dramatic, with vegetation that ranges from rainforest to enchanted stands of cacti, looming like sentinels along the coast. Coore and Crenshaw’s work seizes on the varied splendor of its setting, moving through changes in environment and elevation, with ocean views on all 18 holes. You don’t just see the water; you navigate it. Nine greens sit on the bluffs; several require Evel Knievel-worthy carries over inlets. Holes 6 through 9 rush up along the coast, as do holes 14 through 18, stirring stretches to close each side.

Some people like to talk about “signature” holes; Coore and Crenshaw don’t. Neither does Cowan-Dewar. He can’t pick a favorite. But he is fond of the 14th, a par-5 that rushes from a lush point inland toward the water; and the par-4 15th, a risk-reward hole that big hitters can try reaching from the tee, tempted by a target cut along the cliffs. And the short par-3 16th, which plays out toward a point on the beach. And—Cowan-Dewar could go on. Better that you see it for yourself.

The course will be the anchor of a real estate development, with a high-end residential community and a boutique resort, among other amenities. Premium lots are currently on sale, ranging from $2 million to $11 million. For more information, check out cabotsaintlucia.com.