Cabot Group Purchases Castle Stuart, To Add Second Course By Tom Doak

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Erik Matuszewski reports on Ben Cowan-Dewar and Mike Keiser’s Cabot operation has taken on Castle Stuart. Already home to Hanse Design’s incredible design that hosted two Scottish Opens, the late Mark Parsinen’s development will now get a second course by Tom Doak.

“It’s building on the foundation we started years ago,” says Cabot CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar, who partnered with Bandon Dunes owner Mike Keiser in establishing the Cabot brand. “These things, they take time. But the chance to build in an amazing location and continue to get to work with amazing people is what it’s all about.”

While Castle Stuart checks the Cabot boxes for world class golf and phenomenal surrounds, more is on the way. Cowan-Dewar and the Cabot team have brought in architect Tom Doak to build a second 18-hole championship course on a property that spans almost 500 acres. The new course, which will begin construction later this year and has a planned 2024 opening, will play around Castle Stuart’s 400-year-old castle, weaving through hillsides and expansive open land. There are also several holes dramatically set on the water further southwest of the current course.

With rumblings of a revived Coul Links and so many other greats in the greater (and stunning) Highlands area, the future as a destination is looking bright.

The Quadrilateral: Wrapping A Wacky Weekend In Golf

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Here I thought it would be a quiet weekend with a few ramifications here or there for the upcoming men’s majors. Instead, we got a fantastic finish in the KPMG Women’s PGA and everywhere else in men’s golf too.

Oh, and how cool did Congressional look? A word not normally associated with what used to be a big, soulless mess! I have before/after pics to prove the point. One of NBC’s aerials:

The Country Club: Q&A With Fred Waterman, By The Numbers And All 18 From Above

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It's Best That Phil WD'd And A Southern Hills First Look

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"Coore & Crenshaw: The cornerstones of success"

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They are the undisputed best in the business and I’m not sure it’s close, so it’s great to read Shaun Tolson’s profile of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw who are still going strong but also working the same way they always have: with the utmost care for the details.

It’s hard to believe this many years later but they struggled to get their design firm off the ground.

Looking back on those early years, when the duo had no pipeline of work and no completed projects upon which they could hang their proverbial hats, both men legitimately wondered if anyone was going to hire them. What they did know was that they shared the same philosophical approach to designing courses. Equally significant, they both shared the same philosophy of how they wanted their business of designing courses to operate. “We knew it had to be run like a business to survive,” Coore explains, “but at the same time, philosophically, we were trying to say that we were going to treat it like a hobby.

“When I say hobby, I mean, ‘let’s have fun doing this.’ Don’t make this such a business that we’re not involved and can’t have fun. If you have this dream to actually create a golf course, but you structure a business deal that takes that dream away, now you’re just a businessman.”

Ultimately, Coore and Crenshaw agreed from the beginning that their No. 1 goal was to design a few interesting golf courses, to be significantly involved in the work and development of those courses as they moved through the conception and construction phases, and to have some fun while doing it all. “Back then, no matter how we progressed, we knew we weren’t going to be prolific,” Crenshaw says. “Our goal was to build a few good golf courses. And that’s never changed. It doesn’t change now.”