Cabot Cape Breton

Cabot Links and Cabot Cliffs brought true links golf to Canada in a landscape that had been waiting for it: firm, sandy ground along the Gulf of St Lawrence, constant coastal wind, and a horizon that rarely leaves the round. Cabot Links, the elder of the two courses, hugs the shoreline through the old town of Inverness, a former coal-mining community that has become one of the more improbable golf destinations in North America. Cabot Cliffs, laid out along headlands above the water, is the more dramatic of the pair.

The par three sixteenth at Cliffs, played across a ravine to a green perched above the ocean, is already counted among the most photographed individual holes in Canadian golf, and it earns the reputation on sight rather than by repetition of the image. The routing at both courses uses the natural dune structure rather than reshaping it, which keeps the golf feeling found rather than built.

Inverness itself is remote by design, a few hours from the nearest major airport and worth every connecting flight required to reach it. The town has grown around the resort with a warmth that larger, more established golf destinations sometimes lose, and the seafood, much of it landed the same day, is a match for the golf.

The season is short by necessity. Cabot operates from late spring through mid autumn, and the best conditions, firm turf and settled coastal weather, tend to arrive from June through September.