INSIGHT
What is the strategy behind Cabot’s golf developments?
Cabot have become the face of modern golf development – creating impressive combinations of courses and real estate. But how do they acquire a site and what are they looking for? Chief executive Ben Cowan-Dewar reveals all
“IT’S an overnight success. It’s only taken two decades!” Ben Cowan-Dewar chuckles as he considers the paradox. Cabot, the company he co-founded in 2004, are currently the hottest name in golf development.
Whether it’s their acquisition of the stunning Lofoten Links in Norway, their resolution to build a second course at Castle Stuart – the much-anticipated Tom Doak-designed Old Petty which opens for limited play later this year – or their transformation of Golf du Medoc (now Cabot Bordeaux), Cabot are fast becoming THE byword for luxury.
Their seven-site portfolio offers destination golf at its finest – focused on a spectacular course, outstanding accommodation, and exceptional service standards.
Cabot are selective, but open to new opportunities; fastidious but fast moving when the stars align. But how do they identify these sites? What are the triggers that compel a purchase and the process behind subsequent investment?
Chief executive Cowan-Dewar sat down with GBQ Digital to talk about inspiration and investment…
What’s the process of identifying a site and then moving to buying it?
It started with Cabot Cape Breton, which I went and saw 20 years ago. I thought I could build one of the best courses in Canada – and if we did we’d be one of the best courses in the world. We built on that with Cabot Cliffs and obviously then went to St Lucia.
Site selection comes down to: Is it truly remarkable and truly spectacular? I think we ticked all those boxes at Cape Breton and in St Lucia and Revelstoke, all of which were developments from scratch.
Then if you look to Cabot Citrus Farms (formerly World Woods) and Cabot Highlands, in Castle Stuart, Lofoten Golf, and Golf du Medoc, which is now Cabot Bordeaux, the common themes are we had relationships with all those places.
Having been in the golf world for a long time, we just get called on these things and if we think we can play a role then we’re all too thrilled to.
In the case of Castle Stuart, I was long a fan of the golf course – as I was at Lofoten – and World Woods I had visited 20 years ago.
It’s built on relationships and making sure they meet the criteria. If it’s truly great golf, and if we think we can wrap an amazing experience around that, then we’re off to the races.
“It looks, with seven Cabot properties and we’re growing at a record clip, like it’s an overnight success. It’s only taken two decades!”
– Ben Cowan-Dewar
Is the golf course that sits on a site very important when it comes to the decision of whether you might acquire it or not?
Yes, 1,000 per cent. In the case of World Woods, Lofoten, and Castle Stuart, they hadn’t developed real estate around them. It’s more acute in Florida, where so many of the golf courses are lined with homes.
Castle Stuart had built the amazing course with Gil (Hanse) and had permits to build a second course, which we have done with Tom Doak, and permits to build lodgings but they hadn’t done that.
If they had, or had lined the place with homes, it probably would have been harder for us to go into it.
Lofoten has an amazing golf course. It’s globally recognised in the World Top 100. It is such an exceptional experience. I think there’s a chance for us to add – whether that’s accommodation or dining – and just round out the experience and really execute the golf at the highest level.
That’s obviously something we’re relatively adept at doing throughout our portfolio and, if we can do that, it will continue to be an experience golfers need to have before they hang up their clubs.
You seem to have revolutionised what golf course real estate should look like
There were exemplars, like Pebble Beach and Cypress Point, where there was real estate and great golf, or the Old Course, which is so integrated within St Andrews. That’s a plus, not a minus.
There were [also] so many terrible exemplars of cookie-cutter rows of homes. You played through tunnels of homes. It’s about letting the golf decide where it wanted to go first and building the real estate around it.
It’s interesting because in a couple of places we’ve worked – Cape Breton and St Lucia – and where we were starting from scratch, there were masterplans that showed homes or clubhouses right on the ocean.
[We] Look at Shinnecock Hills and how amazing it was sitting up on the hill overlooking the golf. That orientation meant that as you look out at Cabot Links from the clubhouse, or from the rooms or the villas, you’re looking out across the golf to the ocean and the sunset.
What better view for a golfer? If I had put that clubhouse on the ocean, and you had to play behind it and over a service road, what worse view for a golfer? Getting close to the ocean, it’s neat if you never see it and then it’s boring after two minutes looking out of a window.
But it’s never boring playing golf and getting to look across a golf landscape and seeing golfers and seeing the light hit the land.
There are so many wonderful exemplars that were centuries old that I think we just probably followed those leads.
How do you develop accommodation?
We adapt in terms of the architecture and try to use architects who are sympathetic to the places we work. We really try and understand what works in that environment because it’s so different jurisdiction by jurisdiction.
We evolve with the market. The market is very rarely to never wrong. If I look back 25 years ago to when I was booking golf packages in the UK, it was two golfers sharing a room and two single twin beds.
That’s evolved to a desire to have four-bedroom cottages with a communal living space. We offer an array of products and at this point we’re adept at building them and understanding what the needs are.
Hopefully, we get a little better every time we build something new but a lot of that is just adapting and listening to the market versus coming in and thinking, ‘we just have to do the same thing we’ve always done’.
There are so many restrictions with what you can do with land and yet you keep finding new sites. How does that happen?
We probably see dozens of opportunities a month. We give them all a good look and have a pretty rigid criteria. It looks, with seven Cabot properties and we’re growing at a record clip, like it’s an overnight success. It’s only taken two decades!
If we feel we can deliver great golf that’s something I’m excited about but I don’t have a magic number. I don’t need to get to 10 or 14. If we only had these seven, that would be great. But I’m also 45 and think I’ve got a good 45 years left in me of doing it. Hopefully we’ll find a few more to uncover.
What are you looking for and where?
We’re trying to be open to North America and Europe primarily. That’s not to say we don’t look at anything else in the world but it would be pretty hard to convince me.
There’s so much growth for us in North America and Europe. It’s really where our brand is well-known, and our customer base is growing.
It’s so hard these days to find those spectacular sites and you don’t really want to compromise. You really have to wait, and be patient, and accept if it doesn’t come along, it doesn’t come along.
We’ve been the great benefactor of serendipity and lots of relationships that have brought us opportunities. We keep looking and keep hustling. We keep working hard every day, and hopefully something great will come our way in the places we want to work.
How do you decide what you’re going to do in terms of investment - whether you reconstruct a course or add a new course to an existing site?
It just depends. In the case of Castle Stuart, I took Rod Whitman, when we were building Cabot Links, to tour it. I played there. I’ve been back many times and was such a huge fan of it that since we bought it, we haven’t done a single thing to Gil and Mark’s (Parsinen) work there – other than continue to be a good steward of it.
It was evident they needed more accommodation, and they needed more golf. We really focused on, ‘how do we get Tom Doak engaged? How do we get that golf course built?’ Start to finish we built in 18 months, which is pretty incredible.
We’re getting ready to go on cottages and launching that real estate. That really was evident but there wasn’t any need to gut Castle Stuart. We can appreciate a great piece of art.
In Medoc, Bill Coore and Rod Whitman obviously did Cabot Links and Cabot Cliffs, which is where we started and is so near and dear.
Bill did St Lucia for us with Ben Crenshaw and Rod is doing Revelstoke. So to buy each of their courses in Bordeaux was a real gift.
I think the architecture was so great, so the focus there wasn’t blowing anything up. It was really, ‘how do we maintain and present this as they both wanted?’
We got Bill over there recently and his inspiration was so much around Tom Simpson and Harry Colt’s work and the heathland courses in England.
We didn’t have to mess with the greens - some of the best greens I have seen. They’re so impressive in their architecture and 35 and 33 years later it’s really just presented better. It’s case by case and examining it.
Then if we’re missing things, which in Medoc is cottages with 79 rooms, you add those to the mix. If it’s a Par 3 (course), which Tom and his team have done at Cabot Highlands as well, then trying to add more of those amenities and those guest touches that really enhance the experience is pretty important.
There’s been a boom in international travel following Covid. Will that continue?
I really believe it will and, obviously, we continue to invest. The interesting thing is at Cape Breton we were sold out in 2019.
The key to me is always to go back to St Andrews, Dornoch, Pebble, which have lasted all century or centuries. If you build something that’s truly great, it will stand the test of time. That’s really what we’re focused on.
We are benefactors and love the growth of golf on the whole, but know if we can do something really special we won’t be subjected just to the tidal influences of the market.
Get golf business insights straight to your inbox
Sign up for the first look at the latest news, features, exclusive interviews and podcast episodes with our monthly newsletter