Cabot Links

The older sister to No. 13 Cabot Cliffs is not a natural links, though it looks and plays like it. Cabot Links was man-made by designer-shaper Rod Whitman, with help from Dave Axland and Jeff Mingay, on a coastal coal mine staging area that serviced mines beneath the sea. Bump-and-run shots on firm fescue turf is the game on this understated layout, with muted dunes, austere bunkering and gentle, generous greens. Call it Canada's Portmarnock (ranked 37th), though Ireland has no match for Cabot's postcard par-4 sixth, a dogleg-left around a tidal yacht basin. In early routings, that was going to be the closing hole.