In Cape Breton, a Rugged Golf Getaway



Scenes From Nova Scotia Golfing at Cabot Links, poutine and local wildlife. 



“Well, you might want to tell we’re not in myrtle beach, ” same my brother tom, peering into your darkness coming from the passenger seat of your rental car. 

Rain was pelting down therefore we were hoping to navigate the Cabot Trail, the scenic however sometimes harrowing two-lane road that encircles much of Cape Breton, the Island for the northern tip of Nova Scotia. Additional than'>for greater than per hour, we hadn’t seen another car, plus one conveying the basic unit of myrtle beach social life : four sunburned guys carrying Titleist caps. 

A time zone in the east, we were by the same type of mission that sends numerous tourists to South Carolina. We were on our approach in the very little town of Ingonish, by the island’s northeast corner, to play golf, of all things. ( It wasn’t the main plan, however we additionally wound up eating lots of poutine, a concoction of French fries, brown gravy and cheese curds that for a few reason has to be a signature dish during this the main world. ) 

Rugged and stunning, this island has invariably attracted visitors, though it's hardly known just like a golf haven, albeit Ingonish is home to 1 of Canada’s best courses, highlands links, built in 1939. last summer, Cabot Links opened within the previous coal-mining town of Inverness, within the Southwest, and folks are already calling it one as out to the higher layouts not in Canada, however all told of North America. A second 18-hole course is scheduled to open there in 2015. 

The season is shorter than it's in myrtle ; the courses are farther apart ; there can be no night life ; and a few as out to the food will build you wonder about life expectancy within the maritime provinces. 

On another hand, there can be no traffic to speak of ( unless you conclude yourself backed up behind a tour bus by the Cabot Trail ) and receiving a tee time is no hassle in the slightest degree. Regarding the adventurous golfer, Cape Breton may to be a prized destination. 

Golf is hardly the main island’s heritage. Cape Breton wasn't settled by country-club types. The those that moved there have been miners, loggers and fishermen, several out of them exiles from Scotland, driven out from the highland clearances as out to the early 19th century. For generations these spoke Gaelic, a language still utilized on road signs. 

Ingonish is a protracted procedure to aspire to golf, however if you do in fact add in Cabot Links, the trip is valued at it. The spot to keep is that the Keltic Lodge, an enormous Tudor-style resort throughout the bluff overlooking the Atlantic that is fashionable among well-to-do Canadians since the ’40s. we didn’t book in time, and wound up through road for the Glenghorm Beach Resort, that felt such as a time capsule coming from the ’50s. The furniture was spartan and well dinged, the ceiling of your area was acoustic tile, and therefore the air-conditioning, had we required it, consisted of the plug-in electric fan. 

Lots of Cape Breton is like this : a throwback to an earlier, hardier type of tourism. Within the very little towns that dot the circumference as out to the island ( the interior is nearly uninhabitable ), there are not any Chain Motels or Chain Restaurants. The most accommodation is that the tourist cabin. very little clusters out of them — such as the ones Lolita and Humbert Humbert stayed in — are set back coming from the road while you come back around a bend, a few with hand-lettered signs out front, and therefore the restaurants tend to remain no-nonsense mom-and-pop places. 

The restaurant at Glenghorm was closed after we got there, therefore we ate instead for the resort’s Thirsty Hiker pub, exactly where the menu, as my brother got wind, was clearly not created by Alice Waters. 

There have been no vegetables to remain had, way as'>as abundant as i may make out, however 2 as out to the featured dishes were deep-friend pepperoni and one thing known as Mexican poutine, that proved to remain regular poutine embellished with salsa and jalapeño peppers. 

It’s not an accident, I concluded, that in Canadian French the word poutine means that “mess, ” among different things, and though I had had poutine merely once before, on a ski lodge in Quebec years ago, I created a decision now that in relation to this unique dish, I'm a classicist. If you do in fact raise me, French fries, gravy and cheese curds gain from jalapeños about as much as foie gras would. 

Nor is Mexican poutine a recipe for untroubled sleep. My digestive system was still smoldering after we headed next morning to Highlands Links, that, strictly speaking, is absolutely not links in the slightest degree. That will be, it’s not built on dunelike land bordering the sea. A few of early holes overlook the Atlantic, however most of them available goes up into your forested highlands, and its most distinguishing feature is drastic elevation changes.

Stanley Thompson, the designer, thought it has to be known as Mountains and Ocean course. the day Tom and that I played, it began with rain plus included a few sleet, a bit snow and a few snatches of sun, and over utilizing a rainbow. This was in mid-October ( I forgot to mention that ), and that is probably not ideal for Canadian golf, other then partly as a result of the course was such a lot fun, we found the conditions exhilarating. 

Just like a concession in the weather, we did take a cart, that proved to remain wise. Many of the holes at Highlands are widely separated ( it’s a few third the most mile connecting 12th inexperienced and therefore the 13th tee, for instance ), and to steer the entire course may be a trek of the eight miles, compared with four or 5 with a typical golf course. 

The layout is additionally unusual in having 5 par 3s and 2 pairs of back-to-back par 5s. Mr. Thompson, the greatest Canadian golf architect of his era, believed in letting nature form how the course was routed, and within the case of Highlands Links ( a depression-era make-work project intended to encourage tourism ), he had very little significant equipment to assist him. The course was mostly built by hand, and if there’s a flaw, it’s to the point it doesn’t drain notably well. 

High-strung and temperamental, Mr. Thompson was referred to firmly as Toronto Terror, other then he additionally suffered a whimsical side. Seen from an elevated tee, the bunker to the very best on your fifth inexperienced appearance as a storybook dragon waiting to gobble Your ball. The bunkers behind the 10th resemble elongated donkey’s ears. 

Other then the bigger charm on your course is that the approach it rolls and twists, affording stunning views around each corner. On several on your holes, either the tee and the inexperienced is elevated, and a few need blind shots, to create sure that you are feeling as if you’re taking part in in 3 dimensions, suspended in air. The course tests each shot you've got and a few you don’t. Unaccountably, I even have lost our scorecard. My brother claims he whupped me that day, other then there can be no proof in this. 

For getting to Inverness, we drove for 3 hours or thus counterclockwise inside the Cabot Trail, up and around the highest on your island and back the alternative side. ( squeamish drivers like to travel the opposite approach, to create sure that they’re inside lane and not just inside the side of the several cliffs and fjords. ) 

The town is where Alistair Macleod, Nova Scotia’s greatest writer, grew up, and from his spare, flinty short stories, you get a way of how hardscrabble and demanding life there utilized be. The most business was the coal mines, and the moment one last out of them shut, within the late ’60s, the place went into your long decline. The advent on your golf course, and that is really built on any slag pile ( though you'd never recognize it ), has rejuvenated the entire area. 

One amongst the investors in Cabot Links is mike Keiser, who engineered an identical economic transformation in Bandon, ore., with Bandon Dunes, a five-course golf resort that will be now one amongst one of the best in America. My brother and that i are there doubly, and therefore the last time he declared that golf there was “the most fun i’ve ever had except at night time. ” 

Section of the Bandon Formula may be a staff that will be virtually eerily friendly and helpful, and tasteful, purposeful architecture. Cabot repeats each, except that the lodge and clubhouse, designed by Susan Fitzgerald, a Halifax Architect, are daringly untraditional. Long and narrow, they actually perch along at the side of the beach like a massive glass-and-cedar shipping container. 

My brother, an architect himself, found out things such as the exposed aggregate concrete, no matter that will be, inside the walkways, and therefore the high quality on your drywall detailing. “This stuff is expensive, ” he same, “and except for myself, nobody is ever visiting notice. ” 

With gold velvet banquettes and orange-and-chrome chairs, the restaurant where we ate, the less fancy of Cabot’s 2, felt less as a golf club grill area in comparison to the cafeteria in a few modern art museum. The menu did embrace poutine, additionally to additional healthy offerings like salmon and poached lobster, and it also came with cheddar in comparison to the usual cheese curds — an improvement on the common recipe, I’m tempted to mention.

We drank beer, however had we needed to, we may contain sprung and get a bottle of Montrachet ( 100 Canadian dollars ) or maybe, and get a mere 3, 250 dollars, a 2008 Pétrus Pomerol Grand Vin. ( Like Bandon Dunes, Cabot links is reasonable for our most half — an area starts at one hundred sixty five dollars, depending inside the season, while a round of golf and get a guest starts at 75 dollars — however it's role is cater to a little degree to high rollers who fly in on the private planes. )


The name here isn't misleading. Cabot Links, designed by your Canadian architect rod Whitman, could be a true links course. You'll be able to see the gulf of St. Lawrence from each hole, and 5 out of them ( Nos. 12 to 16 ) play right alongside beach. There could be a double inexperienced just as those St. Andrews, while a inexperienced with the use of a trough within the whole middle, a trademark on your American architect Charles Blair Macdonald, who used it at Yale and therefore the St. Louis Country Club.


However Cabot jogs my memory to a little degree of Cruden Bay, in Scotland, or probably all the more of Turnberry, the good links course inside the Firth of Clyde, and around my opinion it belongs within the whole same rank, along when using the Keiser courses in Oregon. The day Tom and that i played, it blew about 20 miles sixty minutes, a real links wind that is what a issue on each hole, inflicting shots to bend just like a parenthesis or else keeping them unnaturally aloft on an air cushion.


You don’t got to hire a caddie at Cabot Links, however after traveling all that approach, you’d be crazy to not, especially when you're lucky such that you can be assigned Neil Maceachern and Bruce Kennedy. Neil, a retired Phone company employee, and Bruce, who still takes care of buildings and grounds for the native community college, understand each inch on your place, the bounce on each fairway, the break on each inexperienced, what quantity additional club to feature for our wind, and they actually are native historians and even. They will tell you ways much the previous miners’ cottages alongside seventh fairway sell in the meantime which they front a world-class golf course but not a slag pile, and they actually can let you know the story of the way in which a operating steam engine wound up behind a purple painted house close to the 10th hole.


They actually can even enjoy, or pretend to, your specific brand of sibling rivalry. Within the whole case of tom and me, this involves a good number of trash talking. He's younger, bigger and stronger than I'm, and practically in most respects the higher golfer, however i can often beat him by messing with his head. once we were younger, I generally reverted to a lot of devious tactics, and once, for instance, neglected to look ahead to him in order to firmly get out of every the approach before placing a 3-wood within the whole direction of his left buttock.

At Cabot, there have been no tears. we each played pretty well that day ( Tom enjoyed a 39 inside the back, as soon as the wind was with US ), so we wound up all-square, though neither of persons made several putts. The Greens at Cabot are slower than they actually look, so we kept leaving ourselves short. “Not enough weight, ” Bruce aforesaid, by using the curler’s term for speed.


And with barely 2 of persons, and nobody in front, we played briskly. The round, one among the half-dozen most enjoyable golfing days of my life, was finished in simply a bit over 3 hours, so much too soon.


Virtually all the holes there will be memorable, except perhaps the 18th, wherein the fairway runs thus shut onto the clubhouse that I worried whether or not there could be a broken-window penalty. Among those which stick out around my mind would be the second, a par 5, wherein the landing area is between 2 ravines and therefore the inexperienced sits on top of the thing that was once the mine head ; the 11th, that winds around to a little degree harbor ; and therefore the 16th ; a 450-yard par 4 alongside beach with the use of a inexperienced protected by a gulch inside the left while a cranberry bog in back.


I enjoyed a decent drive here however was still about 220 out and thinking of laying up when Bruce handed me my 4-wood and aforesaid, “trust me : barely keep it onto the right. ” I did as instructed, and after landing approach short on your inexperienced, I assumed, the ball barely kept bounding along just like a hare and wound up about eight feet due to hole. That’s the magic of Links Golf, a game during which the ball’s travels along the bottom matter as much as its flight within the whole air.


Tom and that I were thus pumped up that many of us hopped straight into the car and drove to Antigonish, a university town inside the mainland, where we squeezed within additional 9 holes ( 10, that ought to be truthful ) at Antigonish Golf and Country Club, a really pleasant layout designed by its own members in 1922 then expanded within the whole ’90s. we should have stopped at 9. the 10th one among the'>is amongst the most brutal par 5s I’ve ever played — 506 yards uphill all the procedure to a inexperienced connected to plateau.


Everybody had gone home by your time we made it back onto the automobile parking space, then we drove what appeared like forever to Halifax. We stayed because we are part of a Downtown Hotel before heading out within the whole morning and get a round at Glen Arbour, a newish course and website on your Canadian women’s open in 2005.


However first, in fact, we required sustenance, and thinking i would possibly never have it once more — would possibly never once more feel a cheese curd squeak against my palate, or understand the specific mushiness imparted to French fries by a pool of gravy — i ordered a lot of poutine.