These future fairways, a first foray into the mountains for what has become one of the biggest brands in destination golf, are now under snow.
And while Ben Cowan-Dewar’s business booms on short-sleeve days, while he can hardly wait to cut the ribbon on what will be Cabot Revelstoke, he fell in love with this town while there was white stuff on the slopes.
“I came here with my family for Christmas this past year,” Cowan-Dewar beamed during a visit to Revelstoke — a community of about 8,000 residents, located along the Trans-Canada Highway in interior B.C. and surrounded by soaring peaks — back in June. “It was absolutely brilliant. We’re from Ontario, so 5,700 feet of vertical drop is like 500 times what we get. I just love it here. I think this place is magical.”
It’s about to even get better, especially if you consider yourself handier with wedges than ski-poles, if you prefer a single Footjoy glove to a pair of puffy mitts.
Golfers are already on a first-name basis with the Cabot brand. The success started with two linksy layouts on the shores of Cape Breton. They’ll soon debut a jaw-dropper in tropical Saint Lucia, recently acquired properties in Florida and Scotland and have another much-anticipated project coming in this idyllic mountain setting where Cowan-Dewar, his wife and three kids hung their stockings last December.
Truth is, the Cabot visionary had initially insisted he wouldn’t be building a course at the base of the gondolas and runs at Revelstoke Mountain Resort, famous for offering the most vertical descent of any alpine hangout in North America. He told as much to Bob Gaglardi, patriarch of the family that owns this powdery playground.
“Look, it’s so hard to build great golf in the mountains because usually the land is so severe,” Cowan-Dewar said, repeating a warning that he had shared with Gaglardi shortly after they were introduced. “The two great mountain exemplars — and I don’t mean just in Canada, I mean in the world — are Banff and Jasper. And it’s because they had the scenery, but they also had land that was so well-suited for golf.
I already knew Revelstoke. I knew it as a great ski destination, as the heli-ski capital of the world, and I knew it as steep. So I just assumed the golf land would be steep. But I said to Bob that I’d swing by when I was coming through and I did, and I literally said, ‘Here’s what I’d do.’ Which was, I’d hire Rod Whitman. I actually called Rod from the site and I said, ‘You gotta come look at this.’ It had great elevation change, the right amount. And then it had these beautiful views. It was just amazing. It was so much better than I thought it was going to be.”
Ultimately, they hired Whitman, best-known for his design work at Cabot Links. As Cowan-Dewar puts its now: “It was just too good to not be a part of.”
The 18 holes at Cabot Revelstoke — the course itself will be known as Cabot Pacific — are slated to open in 2024. The majority of the corridors have now been cleared. There is an emphasis during construction on acing the drainage, since firm-and-fast is the goal.
“I’m pretty happy about the routing,” said the always understated Whitman, originally from Alberta and now part of a design firm that features a hat-trick of respected talents, with Dave Axland and Keith Cutten being the others. “There’s going to be a lot of cool golf out there, I really feel like. That’s what is coming down the pipe.”
