Bill Coore doesn’t want to talk about “signature holes.”
That leftover cliché of 1980s course development and marketing has fallen out of favor among many fans of great golf architecture, for good reason. In trying to design one hole that is especially photogenic or memorable, the other 17 might be best left on the cutting room floor.
“We’ve failed, to be quite candid, if we have a signature hole,” said Coore, partner of Ben Crenshaw in designing several of the best modern courses in the world. “To me, that basically is saying that you spent all your efforts on that one hole. You grounded the entire golf course around one hole.”
Coore admits with a chuckle that he has resorted to subterfuge when presented the question of what is the signature hole at several courses he has routed around the world.
“We’ve actually gone to the reverse sometimes when somebody will ask what’s your signature hole – at least I have, I don’t know that Ben has – but a couple times I have literally picked the most bland hole on the entire course, and I’m talking about photogenically and visually speaking, and said that’s our signature hole right there,” the native of North Carolina said with a laugh.
Instead, Coore wants to lay out courses that flow from hole to hole, never lacking in interest while taking advantage of all the ground has to offer. He’s more concerned about the shots to be played on any given hole, less so with photo ops.
“We think of golf as being a collection of holes that go together and fit together,” he said. “Maybe one or two or three or four are more dramatic than the others, but we don’t think of them as signature holes.”
So what to do with a site such as Cabot Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, home to Coore and Crenshaw’s still-in-development Point Hardy Golf Club? The whole place screams, “Take a picture!” Cliffs rise straight from the Atlantic Ocean with new golf holes perched atop them, waves crashing into white foam below. This is one of Earth’s great meetings of land and sea.
Imagine any of the most scenic seaside golf courses in the world. Cypress Point or Pebble Beach in California, any of the layouts at Bandon Dunes in Oregon, Royal Dornoch and a handful of other Scottish or Irish heavyweights, a slew of Mexican and Caribbean beauties. Point Hardy Golf Club is a match for any of them, as far as visuals and proximity to salt water.
Given such a beautiful tropical site that really has all the makings of a photo shoot, with a mile and a half of see-it-to-believe-it scenery, on what do Coore and Crenshaw narrow their focus to build a golf course bestowed with so much drama?
“Playability, playability, playability,” Coore said.
Really, Bill? Not the point of cliffs jutting into the ocean on this end of the property, or the promontory at the other end? Even Coore smiles as he describes the wow factor of Cabot Saint Lucia, one of several new Cabot Collection properties that will expand the Canadian company’s reach over the next several years from Nova Scotia to the tropics, Scotland, Florida and western Canada.
“The site is so visually spectacular,” said Coore, whose design credits include such highly ranked layouts as the Sheep Ranch and Bandon Trails at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, Sand Hills in Nebraska and Cabot Cliffs in Nova Scotia. “Most people will come here and ooh and ah, particularly as you look down the hill or look along the cliff at the shoreline and the ocean. It’s almost beyond description, dramatic. Ben and I are both pretty conservative when it comes to our assessments and descriptions, but you’ll see, it’s just, well …”
His voice trails off as he imagines the cliffs and all the opportunities for superlative golf holes upon them. Then he gets back to the matter at hand and what he considers the primary job of a golf architect, especially at an extreme site such as Point Hardy featuring volcanic hills and rocky ground. Coore has said before that it’s easy to build a hard golf course, and the trick is in designing a fun layout that golfers want to tackle again and again.
“Playability, playability, playability,” he repeats as his mantra. “And trying to create a golf course that doesn’t end up being one that people might come and take photographs of every hole and just a photogenic course, and then they go, ‘Eh, it really wasn’t that much fun; I didn’t enjoy it,’ kind of thing. It would be too extreme, or something. That’s what we’re hoping not to happen. We want to try to create something that they’re going to want to come back and play.”
Discerning the routing
Having seen Point Hardy, it’s hard to imagine not wanting to play it again and again, based entirely on the visuals. The same goes for the entire island nation of Saint Lucia. Idyllic beaches are frequently fringed by volcanic cliffs rising abruptly into steep hills and small mountains covered with tropical rain forest until everything tops out at 3,120 feet with Mount Gimie. The island currently has only two golf courses, both operated by Sandals, but its shorelines seem purpose-built for dramatic golf holes in much the same way the sport fits so naturally onto the Monterey Peninsula in California.
The drive to Cabot’s new property at the north end of the island, which is only 27 miles long, consumes nearly two hours depending on traffic through the capital city of Castries. The route zigs and zags across the mountains on sometimes skinny roads that feature deep ditches to handle heavy rainfall, plus a wide range of meandering dogs at seemingly every corner.
Saint Lucia’s population of some 180,000 is largely of African descent, and a long history of European imperialism ended in 1979 with the island’s independence. The nation is part of the British Commonwealth, and English is the predominant language along with local Creole. Tourism keeps the island afloat, and it’s common for multiple huge cruise ships to be docked in port at Castries. A quick look about the place and it’s easy to see why so many Europeans and North Americans choose to vacation in Saint Lucia.
That motif certainly extends to the 300-plus acres Cabot purchased for its residential community and golf course, slated to open in December. Cliffs, blue water, native flora, birds, salt spray – those are all jaw-dropping contributors to a wonderful walk in the park.
But on Coore’s early visits, he didn’t spend all that much time looking down upon the surf. Instead, he kept peering up at the frequently steep and tricky ground above the cliffs.
“We knew the golf course was going to inherently be extraordinarily spectacular and dramatic,” he said. “Our concern is, with the elevation change here with it being a volcanic island … obviously you can’t get all the holes routed right on the ocean and cliffs, there just isn’t enough room there for that. So you have to go inland. And as soon as you start inland, you go up. How do you make those holes interesting? … That’s been our biggest concern.”
There were some 3,000 yards of possibilities on the cliffs at Point Hardy. Coore and Crenshaw made the most of those, no doubt. But the design team needed another 3,000-plus yards of golf holes, and Coore picked a routing that climbs inland at the start of each nine before looping back and down to finish directly above the surf.
Ben Cowan-Dewar, the Canadian co-founder and CEO/majority owner of the Cabot Collection, said Coore was the perfect man to discover all those inland holes. A master router, Coore has on several occasions discovered a way to build 18 contiguous and complementary holes on ground where others haven’t seen all the possibilities.
“He’s just the best at it,” Crenshaw said on a walk about the layout as its grow-in was still in progress, with three holes yet to be finished.
Coore’s secret? It isn’t found on a topo map. “He walks a site over and over until he’s happy,” Crenshaw said. “He finds animal trails and heads down those. He’s amazing at it. If there’s a golf course out there, he can find it.”
After walking Point Hardy, Coore knew the challenge would be elevating players to a plateau several hundred yards inland of the cliffs. He didn’t want to rely on a 300-yard, zig-zagging ride in a golf cart from the lower stretches to the higher holes. Golfers must play their way up from the clubhouse near the cliffs, experiencing everything the site offers along the way. The course will be walkable despite some of the slopes, even if most players eventually choose to take a buggy.
Those early climbs on each nine might best be compared to a roller-coaster. Each side blasts upward at the start before twisting and turning at height, then racing back down toward the cliffs. The analogy begins at No. 1, a 491-yard par 5 that plays much longer as it climbs.
“We’ve always believed the first hole should tell you something about what you’re about to experience,” Coore said. “The first hole here, your experience might be ‘Whooo, boy, this is going to be mountain climbing.’ In fact, once you get to the first green, holes 2, 3, 4 are on much calmer, very traditional golf ground. Spectacular too, visually, but up on the plateau. …
“It’s interesting, and Ben and I were just talking about it this week, some of the holes here that we actually find the most interesting and we’re happy with are the inland holes, not the most dramatic oceanside holes but the inland holes. And they’re some good ones.”
The second is a long par 4 with views of ocean below and mountains beyond, its green perched into an small quarry where lava rock was mined years ago – Coore said it’s among his favorites at Point Hardy. The par-5 third doubles back atop the plateau, and the par-3 fourth with its Redan green plays away from the ocean but begins the downhill journey from the layout’s highest point.
To take the roller-coaster analogy further, what goes up must come down. Nowhere at Cabot Point is that more obvious than on the tee of the par-4 fifth at the head of a valley with nearly 1,000 yards of golf holes and views down toward blue water beyond the seventh green.
Coore and Crenshaw are known as minimalist designers, trying to move as little dirt as possible when building a course, allowing the natural features to shine. But that wasn’t the case for several of these inland holes at Point Hardy.
Before construction began, Coore said he was concerned if this valley was too steep and severe to be truly playable and enjoyable. Course shaper Keith Rhebb, who lived for months on the island in 2020 as COVID locked down travel, spent considerable time on heavy equipment in this valley, moving rocks and dirt to shift a creek bed to one side while flattening and extending what would become the fifth and sixth fairways. Only then could the finer golf features – bunkers, greens, humps and hollows – be introduced. Most of the final product looks like it was there forever, but it didn’t come as easy as at some famous Coore and Crenshaw sites.
“You know, I guess it turned out OK,” Coore said with a broad smile while standing on that fifth tee box, staring down at the ocean.
That valley ends at the seventh, a peninsula par 3 playing east into the ocean, impossibly gorgeous with cliffs on both side and breaking waves everywhere. It’s only 139 yards long, a mere chip shot downhill for many players, but it offers one of the most difficult greens on the course to hit with a lofted club in hand and trade winds whipping past. Coore and Crenshaw are famous for their short par 3s, and this one certainly will be among the most dramatic on the planet.
Farther onto the promontory behind the seventh green awaits an unforgettable tee shot on the short, 325-yard par-4 eighth. From the back tee box, players must carry more than 200 yards of surf and cliff to reach a fairway angled to the left and uphill to a green guarded by steep bunkers in front that resemble nothing more than two nostrils. Following that, another downhill par 3 atop the cliffs closes out the front nine.
‘Born of nature’
The back nine begins much like the front: steeply uphill.
The 10th is a 344-yard par 4 straight up a hill, playing much longer than the scorecard indicates. From there, Nos. 11, 12 and 13 – still under construction in February for the tour with Coore and Crenshaw – wrap around the backside of the plateau before the long, par-5 14th races downhill toward the water.
Then comes a stretch of unforgettable shot after unforgettable shot.
The par-4 15th, playing from a peninsula tee jutting into a bay, requires a semi-blind blast over a 30-foot cliff to reach the fairway. That’s followed by the 16th, the first of back-to-back par 3s, playing 156 yards downhill over the bay to a green perched on yet another promontory. On just about any course, this might be the prettiest hole. But like the par-3 15th at Cypress Point, which is followed by the world-famous 16th and its carry over open water on one of the best classic courses in the world, this par-3 16th at Point Hardy is somewhat overshadowed – at least visually – by what comes next.
The 17th is simply ridiculous, especially from the optional higher tee perched almost impossibly atop a mound of rocks rising straight up from the ocean. Players must climb a trail through brush to reach the small tee, which had to be manually carved into the volcanic rocks by course shapers because there was no way to get heavy earth-moving equipment up the slope. The hole does have a more-traditional lower tee box, but this tiny back box is a thing of dreams. Or nightmares.
“There’s something about that tee,” Crenshaw said as he toured the course. “I’ve only been up there once. It’s too high. It’s beautiful, no doubt. But it’s almost creepy being up there that high. … I just don’t want to go back up there again.”
The 187-yard hole plays directly into the prevailing winds, across a rock wall to a green set tight on a corner of cliffs. But in keeping with their goal of playability, Coore and Crenshaw offer players a relatively generous approach with a long patch of fairway short and left of the putting surface. Par might not be easy, but bogey is within reach of any player who doesn’t bite off more than they can chew with the tee shot. Birdies will be special.
From the opposite side of a hill, the par-4 18th plays steeply downhill before crossing yet another beautiful cut in the rocks, calling to mind the eighth at Pebble Beach Golf Links. It’s the seventh hole at Point Hardy playing entirely or almost so along the cliffs, and if Coore and Crenshaw did their jobs as intended, players won’t be able to wait to race back to the first tee and give Point Hardy another shot.
“I’m not a philosopher, you know, and I’m not a great studier of human evolution or anything, but it seems we just all gravitate toward water,” Coore said when asked about why golf is better along a waterfront, especially one as marvelous as at Point Hardy. “I’ll leave that to somebody else to explain why. I think the ocean, the sea – whether it’s down close to the sea and dunes or on dramatic cliffside sites like Cypress Point or here – there’s an unmistakable link in the draw and the drama of seeing waves crashing and hearing the sounds. It’s an extreme presentation, I guess, of nature. And golf is a game born of nature.”
More details on Cabot Saint Lucia
- When opened in December, Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot Saint Lucia will allow some versions of public-access play early on as its membership role is filled, with details still being determined. Eventually the course will be at least mostly private.
- Yes, it will be expensive compared to most U.S. daily-fee prices. Green fees and stay-and-play options have yet to be set, but don’t expect it to be cheap on a site like this.
- Cabot Saint Lucia includes a housing development, ranging from fairway villas all the way up to mansions priced at millions of dollars. Besides the golf, there will be a beach club in a gorgeous bay and a full slate of luxury amenities. There are no plans for a traditional hotel. Guest accommodations will be available as rental luxury residences and villas.
- Jack Nicklaus once routed a golf course on the same site, but his layout was never built and the property exchanged hands.
- Guests can fly into Hewanorra International Airport at the south end of Saint Lucia. That will leave a car ride of some 1.5-2 hours on small, winding roads across the mountainous center of the island’s rainforest. Helicopter transport also is available to the north end of the island. The flight to Hewanorra is about three hours from Miami International, and there are direct flights from other U.S. airports such as Atlanta and New York.
