Golf Course Architecture - Issue 72, April 2023

Point Hardy Golf Club is the latest collaboration between architects Coore & Crenshaw and golf developer Cabot, the team behind the highly acclaimed Cabot Cliffs course at Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Canada. Their latest project has taken the designers back onto cliffs, this time on the northern tip of the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, where their design is now growing in ahead of a grand opening at the end of 2023. “It is a site that is spectacular beyond description,” Bill Coore told GCA after first visiting the property. He and design partner Ben Crenshaw could immediately see the potential for something special, but the extreme elevation changes would require a huge earthmoving effort. Jim Barger of Oncore Group was hired as the general contractor and construction manager; decades of work in the Caribbean meant he had the experience and connections required to navigate the site’s challenges. Barger would work alongside Trevor Dormer and Keith Rhebb, Coore & Crenshaw’s lead shapers for the project, to realise the design team’s vision for a breathtaking but playable course. “We knew Bill and Ben, with nine greens on the ocean, would create something epic, but we all wondered how we could inject fun,” says Cabot’s Ben Cowan-Dewar. “The coastline moves in and out, so the number of thrilling times the golfer crosses the ocean will provide plenty of challenge, but early feedback has also referenced how much fun it is, which is really gratifying. Both nines close with stretches of spectacular coastal golf, but I think the finish of fourteen to eighteen is something that all golfers will be pretty excited to see!” 80 “ The coastline moves in and out, so the number of thrilling times the golfer crosses the ocean will provide plenty of challenge” The fifteenth is a spectacular short par four POINT HARDY

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