Golf Course Architecture - Issue 63, January 2021

24 TEE BOX Cabot begins new mountain course project COURSE BLUEPR INT Clearing work has started on a new 18-hole golf course designed by Rod Whitman of newly formed golf design firm Whitman, Axland & Cutten (WAC) at the British Columbia ski resort of Revelstoke. The course will be part of a project led by Canadian developer Cabot, which also includes a 150-room hotel and real estate. “We are always looking at sites, all around the world,” said Cabot CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar, who co-founded the firm with Mike Keiser. “This opportunity in Revelstoke is too good to ignore. Two and a half years ago, I looked at the site, and straight afterwards, I called Rod and said, ‘I have an opportunity for you’.” Revelstoke is around 200 miles from the Sagebrush course created by Whitman that opened in 2009. Keith Cutten, a partner at WAC, says the projects are not really comparable. “This site is so much better for golf than Sagebrush. The first hole there plays straight up a hill, and the eighth is completely manufactured. None of that will be necessary here. “So many mountain courses are either on f lat land in valley bottoms, with very little interest, or alternatively are on ski hills that are really too steep for good golf. This site is different – it has constant contour, but isn’t too severe. The majority of the property is just gently rolling, with some big washes coming off the hillside. Very little will have to be manufactured, and I don’t see us using a lot of dynamite, if any at all – there are rock outcroppings, but nothing that impedes golf.” The first and seventeenth greens are separated by a cluster of bunkers