Ben Cowan-Dewar has the look of a person who’s having fun with his life. Sipping on a beer within the library of a swanky resort on Saint Lucia, he’s telling me about his new {golfing} enterprise on the island – Level Hardy Golf Membership – a Coore & Crenshaw design. It’s the most recent in a sequence of initiatives which have established his firm, Cabot, as one of many pre-eminent golf improvement companies on the planet. He’s solely 43-years-old however he now has properties in Canada, Scotland, the Caribbean and the USA. He has each proper to be quietly assured. However above all that success, Cowan-Dewar is sort of merely a really good man who is strictly the place he desires to be.
“I feel the best pleasure in life and in enterprise is to do what you’re keen on with individuals you’re keen on doing it with. There is no such thing as a substitute for that,” he says. “I feel success follows that. It’s simpler to comply with your ardour, to work all of the hours, in case you’re loving it and also you wish to do it for these round you.”
Cowan-Dewar has loved great success within the golf trade in a brief area of time. However his profession path began early.
From a younger age, there have been clear hints that Cowan-Dewar’s future lay on the planet of golf course improvement. As a younger child, dwelling on the household farm in Ontario, he began to see the potential for golf holes throughout the property and was quickly constructing greens and tees. He travelled and golfed extensively as a younger man, enjoying lots of the world’s nice programs. By the point he bought to the College of Toronto he had robust ambitions to work in golf.
“I used to be an entrepreneur in all probability earlier than I knew what an entrepreneur was,” he says. “At college, I began a golf journey enterprise, initially working excursions to Scotland and Eire.”
That was a profitable little enterprise, however Cowan-Dewar rapidly started to see additional prospects.
“It was the beginning of the web,” he says. “We noticed a possibility to assist these worldwide programs, and services with their digital advertising. Should you had been a golf resort in, say, the Caribbean, it was laborious to hook up with a consumer in Canada. The one possibility was print and mail, so we had a fantastic opening there.”
For a lot of of those well-known worldwide venues, nice imagery was one other lacking ingredient.
“I had the World Atlas of Golf, a guide I liked from the age of about 9, and that had a number of pictures however that was mainly it. So these had been the one pictures you’d see of Seminole or of Royal Melbourne. And so, all these locations had been mystical,” he says. “We had been saying, by with the ability to showcase how lovely your house is on the web, you’re going to take pleasure in success. And we had some large short-term wins promoting golf course picture excursions on CD Rom.”
These successes gave Cowan-Dewar a way of the worldwide market and impressed him to go additional and look in the direction of his final ambition – the creation of his personal golf course. Founding Cabot with Mike Keiser, of Bandon Dunes fame, he set about that process on a stretch of gorgeous shoreline on the island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The consequence was Cabot Hyperlinks, which opened in 2011. 4 years later, Cabot Cliffs opened simply a few miles away. Each programs at the moment are recognised as among the many finest in Canada.
With the success on Cape Breton, Cowan-Dewar noticed a principal that could possibly be replicated – that spectacular settings end in spectacular golf programs.
“I’ve by no means seen a fantastic golf course on a very banal website,” he says. “So it was, ‘okay, you’re making an attempt to hunt out the very best land you’ll be able to.’ In lots of instances that meant getting on a airplane to journey and discover.”
The Canadian has travelled the world golf websites and is consistently studying about the place the very best alternatives lie.
“I’ve checked out websites in Africa, South America and Asia. There are some locations you get to and suppose, nicely this may be superb however it’s so non-commercial as to not have a enterprise mannequin,” he says. “However we are able to discover these magical locations like right here on Saint Lucia, I’ll maintain specializing in that.”
One alternative Cowan Dewar noticed was at Fortress Stuart in Scotland (now Cabot Highlands.) Cabot has acquired the famend facility on the Moray Firth and has plans for additional improvement there, together with a brand new course being designed by Tom Doak.
“At Fortress Stuart, I noticed an incredible alternative. Not simply to construct a second course, to construct lodges to offer nice meals. But additionally due to the proximity to Nairn, to Tain, Golspie, Brora, Dornoch, Skibo – You’ve got this superb nucleus,” he says. “To be a part of that providing is one thing particular.”
Cowan-Dewar is extraordinarily educated on all features of the sport. Working with Doak at Fortress Stuart and with Ben Crenshaw and Invoice Coore on the undertaking at Level Hardy in Saint Lucia, Cowan-Dewar recognsies that the nice websites want nice architects to make them really shine.
“I’ve had the pleasure to work with a number of the actually nice architects of our time,” says Cowan-Dewar. “And there are specific websites you understand simply match with sure designers. Once I noticed this land at Level Hardy, I solely had two names in my thoughts – Invoice Coore and Ben Crenshaw. I couldn’t see anyone else doing the job and I’m thrilled they agreed to it. What they’ve created right here is one thing particular.”
Cowan-Dewar is clearly a pushed and extremely formidable man, however his goal shouldn’t be solely getting cash. He’s making a legacy and he desires every of his properties to be distinctive. To take a seat comfortably throughout the land and terrain they occupy and to replicate the place they belong to.
“It’s straightforward to repeat a method and reproduce it in numerous places,” he says. “However we received’t serve Nova Scotia lobster within the mountains of British Colombia. Whether or not Saint Lucia, Scotland or Florida, these locations had been superb earlier than we ever stepped onto them. It’s our job to let that shine by.”
The imaginative and prescient for Cabot shouldn’t be wild growth, solely benefiting from alternatives. If no additional alternatives current themselves, Cowan-Dewar is content material.
“If this at 43 had been my life’s work, even when simply Saint Lucia was my life’s work, I’d be delighted,” he says. “If we are able to discover extra Saint Lucias then we received’t say no. However we’re not going to strive placing a sq. peg in a spherical gap.”
It comes again to his level about success coming naturally in case you comply with your passions although, and it appears clear that Cowan-Dewar is doing simply that. Cabot shouldn’t be merely chasing large income. The corporate is creating particular {golfing} locations, utilizing the very best architects within the enterprise in some very particular locations. It is probably not formulaic, however it’s definitely an excellent method.