Adjusting expectations is never easy, whether it is about seeing our children growing up, assessing our self -esteem or planning a golf trip with friends. Twelve months ago I registered for what an idyllic excursion seemed: a cruise with golf theme in the Canadian maritime areas on a four -mast engine boat. The 12-day “Fiddle & Sticks” trip, conducted by Expedition Experience, included approach ports in the national Îles-de-la-Madeleine in Québec; The outer ports of Newfoundland, villages that can be reached exclusively by water or through the air; Nova Scotia and St. Pierre, a French territory (euros and passport required), with golf courses of world class along the way. Despite my acute seasickness, I had sailed a large part of this trip before and I thought it was great. But it was the promise of golfing in Cape Breton who checked the ‘Must-Go-Again’ box for me.
Then came the curvebal. While I stood in line in Toronto for my connecting flight to Nova Scotia, I received an SMS from my friend and travel companion, Breton Murphy from Halifax, in which he warned me that the departure had been deleted because of a logistics problem: our captain had left unexpectedly for Central Europe. Unfourished, and so close to playing Cabot on the left and Cabot Cliffs that I could taste the salty air, we exchanged a keel for a car and we rushed to Cape Breton.
Murphy, my improvised driver with a Poulter-like fashion taste, grew up in Sydney, a historic mining town on the east coast of Cape Breton. He spent his childhood on the Bras d’Or-Meren, the inland sea of the island, and visited the huts on the banks of Lake family members, an escape that he continued during his studies at St. Francis Xavier University. His anecdotes fed our Odyssee better than my English breakfast tea.
As a Pacific Northwesterner I can’t approach Cabot Cape Breton without making comparisons with Bandon Dunes. The similarities are not coincidental. When Cabot founder Ben Cowan-Dewar was shown De Grandongen between Inverness and the Atlantic Ocean, he contacted Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser.
Keizer was fully occupied by his fast-growing resort in Oregon and passed on the investment option until he visited the Nova Scotia package, or more specifically the forty plots that Cowan-Dewar had merged. The two formed a partnership, in which Keizer fulfilled the role of mentor rather than manager. The Canadian architect Rod Whitman was hired to design Cabot on the left. Just like David McLay Kidd, who was picked out of oblivion to design Bandon Dunes, Whitman had never been commissioned for a project of this size. Cowan-Dewar and Whitman broke the land in 2009, an unfavorable year to launch a daring project on the eastern edge of North America. The course was opened three years later.
It would be a crime to concentrate exclusively on car journeys and not to drive here, since Cape Breton is one of the most beautiful pieces in North America, best to see from the Cabot Trail, a 300-kilometer route running around the island. When autumn colors make their appearance, it is just as beautiful as any other place on earth. My first visit to Cape Breton concentrated on walking, paddling and hunting moons in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Gaelic, Acadian and Mi’kmaq cultures add even more patterns to the Tartan.
The Celtic Colors International Festival, perhaps the most beautiful celebration of Celtic music and culture in the world, will start at the beginning of October when the Sugar Dovers, Berken and Beech turn into a tree caleidoscope. The artistic spectrum is also breathtaking, with more than 200 events and 50 music performances spread over nine days.
Celtic Colors corresponds to the final season rates of Cabot Cape Breton. Although the weather can be temperamental in October, it is a pleasure to walk over these routes in sunlight filtered by clouds and fresh autumn temperatures, and all the better with a discount. The geography of the Cape will also not disappoint any other time of year, with vast Alpine forests that embrace glacier lakes.
Cape Breton was no stranger to excellent golf before the arrival of Cowan-Dewar. In 1939 the National Park Service Stanley Thompson, Canada’s dean of golf architecture, hired to design nine holes in the park. Thompson, who insisted on nine extra jobs, created Cape Breton Highland Links, a former part of Golf’s list of top 100 jobs in the world and one of the most amazing and varied 18-hole walks anywhere.
From the starting point in the park, the route goes uphill through the pine trees and then down towards the coast. For the par-3 third hole, a Carry about a Babyloch is required; The Par-5 7th dives into the forest and cuts a narrow passage through a forest gorge; The 9th, a short par 4, has a blind approach, while the par-3 10th is abruptly in a Dell; The Par-3 12th requires a beastly Carry along the Clyburn River. Then it goes into the highlands and back towards the Atlantic Ocean for the conclusive holes. Five-time years later, Thompson’s Cape Breton Highland should be added to any Cape Breton golf circuit on the left, especially now that recent attention has improved the previously filthy complexion of the track.
Murphy and I had prepared us for two days by playing a lesser-known but only a little less challenging layout, The Lakes at Ben Ein. Located on the eastern bank of the Bras d’Or-Meer, these 18 swing along the hill and offer several beautiful views on the lake of the same name. Bos flanks every fairway. Beks slide over favorite landing areas. The Par-3 17one On the golden hour, framed by the lake, it yields such a beautiful picture as you could paint without an ocean in the background.
That brings us to the masterpieces of Cabot Cape Breton in the Atlantic Ocean. More than out and back Nines, a sand base, tee-to-green swivel grass and other classic characteristics, I believe that a link can best be defined by surprise: blind shots, hidden greens, crazy contours. It is an insult to call a course ‘misled’. But I consider ‘boring’ as the most defamatory description of a course, a name that will most likely cancel future visits, closed.
Cabot on the left and Cabot Cliffs never feel everyday. It is true that these jobs, which are above the ocean as an overflow pool, have an unfair aesthetic advantage, but it is the double layouts – brothers and sisters but not twins – that make me dizzy.
If possible, first play the links, since the Whitman design does not carry the teeth of the Cliff. You will still have to concentrate, as I did not do on the 465 meter long par-4 6one When, consumed by the jumped in bay that waited to drown my Lefty fade, I hit the native juniper through the fairway. Problems are also lurking on the 620-yard 11oneA plateau and valley setup that I could never fully find out. It was the only gap on the links where the insights of a Caddie would have proved to be invaluable.
Normally I am not so obsessed with wind, because my ball flight does not exactly stimulate heaven. But the 108 meters, par-3 14th, with an elevated tee with a view of the Atlantic, almost rolled me up in a fetal position. Murphy rose over the green during a break in the wind shots; I aiming to the left of the green and saw my ball on the right sail a bunker. Triple-Bogey. I adjusted my launching angles for the last four holes, a last piece that turned out to be particularly punished for quirky shots.
Just like his counterpart, Cabot Cliffs starts benign. The opening hole is a par 5 of 581 meters with a few well -placed bunkers to hold your focus. Although Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw are known as two of the nicest people in the industry, the kidding ends in the second hole, for which an agile tee-shot is needed that is threatened by a stream, followed by a blind blow to a raised green lurking behind a bush really started.
Crai S. Bower
The giggling continues. The 389-Yard Par-4 3rd demands the first of countless (ok, nine) Carry’s, the six par 3s not included. (On the cliffs, pars in Tertsen are dissected.) Of the nine ‘you say prayers and wave’ tee-shots, the gaping par 5 7 of 589 metersoneWith a water grave underneath and a cemetery filled with bushes on the right, causes the most frightening nightmares.
There may be no more demanding task for an architect than composing a blind shot. As for the golfer, so much can go wrong. After all, it is a thin line between an enchanting function and a frustrating gimmick. Coore and Crenshaw give a master class over the 15th hole, a par 5 of 560 meters, where you could hit a perfect second shot with a long iron or fairwaywood, the ball along the right side of the fairway shoots to the collectiongreen where eagles, or at least two-putt birdies, land.
The six par-3s also take place in a creative cadence with a few blind greens and lots of room for creativity. In the 186 meter 6oneOur foursome saw every tee-shot disappear behind the hill, appear again to overcome the rear edge and then stumbled back the abyss before we gathered, we discovered a little later, within a meter of each other, about fifteen steps of the flag.
Like the 6one entertained us with unseen rotations, the 176-yard 16one Our quartet confused from the start, the flag a appearance so far to the left of the greenery that I questioned my distance booklet. Faced with a pure ocean transfer about spectacular coagulation tower, I was sure that my five irons would be a patch, were it not for the Green unforeseen to descended the impressive Atlantic Ocean.
Coore and Crenshaw are again working on the 331-Yard 17oneA par 4 that hugs the cliffs, where a well -beaten ride over the cliffs to an invisible fairway can catch a speed lock and flow to the mouth of the green, assuming that various threatening bunkers are avoided.
If both jobs were on my side of the continent, I would hit Cabot on the left when I could, but I would play Cabot Cliffs with a headlight if that meant that I had to collect more rounds.
We ended at Cabot’s Whit’s Public House before we drove back to Baddeck, a harbor village on the Bras d’Or Lake where we had launched our day with a two -hour lobster boat and where we were planning to end the evening with fresh lobster in the new Main Street Restaurant.
The next morning, while I picked up a scone from the fantastic Herring Choker Deli outside the city, a hand -painted lighthouse magnet to take home, a symbol of the charms of Cabot Cape Breton.
The owner of Expedition Experience assures me that ‘Fiddle & Sticks’ will appear in the books again in 2026. I am ready to wax my clubs, to grab my acupressure poles against nausea and make my way back over the continent to the maritime sea.
;)
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