He does not keep count of the number of courses he has designed, because, he says, what interests him is quality and not quantity. On the Costa del Sol, where he took up residence 45 years ago, he is, along with Robert Trent Jones, the most prolific designer, since seven courses bear his signature: Finca Cortesín, Santana, La Reserva de Sotogrande, La Cala (his three 18-hole courses) and Valle Romano. Cabell B. Robinson is one of the most prestigious golf designers in Europe and has lived for many years on the Costa del Sol, where he was sent by his teacher and mentor, the legendary Robert Trent Jones, “I think because he didn’t like my moustache”.
Born in 1941, this American with a degree in history from Princeton University, who then studied at the Harvard School of Design and later graduated in landscape architecture from the University of Berkeley, began working for the great golf course designer Robert Trent Jones, whose youngest son he had met at Harvard.
In 1970 Cabell moved to the Old Continent to take over Jones’ European office and settled on the Costa del Sol, where he has resided ever since. The only member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects in Europe, Cabell spent seventeen years with Jones until 1987 when he set up on his own. Before the move to this side of the Atlantic, Cabell had already designed two courses in the United States and one in Puerto Rico. In Europe he was involved, if not actually the author, in the creation of the twenty or so courses that Jones has signed on this continent since he opened his office here.
As his own boss, Cabell designed courses in Spain at La Cala de Mijas, La Reserva de Sotogrande, Santana Golf & Country Club, Valle Romano, Finca Cortesin, Las Colinas and Castillo de la Mota. It also creates courses in Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Cyprus and Morocco. Highlights include the Portuguese Praia del Rey, the Moroccan Golf Les Dunes and the French Evian Resort Golf Course, home of the women’s major The Evian Championship.
He speaks slowly, with an affable face highlighted by the bushy and characteristic mustache that has accompanied him all his life, wearing a striking large silver bracelet in ethnic style that stands out on his right forearm, Cabell does not mince his words and shakes – politely, of course – dialectical blows to those designers who only think about money and not in a job well done. “I have turned down commissions because the terrain was not ideal, but not everyone does it,” he says by way of introduction. And he tells an anecdote in this regard about one of the commissions he turned down, on the Costa del Sol, and which was finally signed by another designer. “After I said I wouldn’t design a course there, I found out that my close friend Roger Rulewich, who spent 35 years with Robert Trent Jones, also turned down the offer. He also didn’t know that I had said no.”
His “bête noires” are the great professional golfers who have become designers. He considers them all to be intruders in the world of design, due to their lack of in-depth knowledge of the subject beyond their experience as players, although he establishes two typologies: those who surround themselves with good design professionals, and those who let themselves be advised by design amateurs. “The truth is that none of them do the routing work,” he says.
“I admire Jack Nicklaus, and he’s very well prepared,” he admits, “but I doubt very much that if you give him a blank piece of paper he would be able, without topography, to divide the terrain and make a design. I’m sure he would do it better than the other (famous players), I don’t know, but basically the other pros don’t have a fucking clue.”
And he goes back to his teacher: “When Jones started, in the 1930s, he had to do everything. Nowadays nobody does everything; for example, I don’t do the irrigation design, now that it is so technological, and I entrust it to an independent specialist, but I believe that professional golfers are not trained to design golf courses. However, they have the name, the fame, and it is very difficult for architects to compete, especially in Dubai and places like that, where they are always looking for a big name player. When Nicklaus started designing, more than forty years ago, having a Nicklaus course was something special, unique, but today that exclusivity no longer exists because he has designed more than three hundred”.
How does a great designer like Robinson tackle a new project? “The first thing to do is to see the terrain, the topography, to see whether or not a golf course can be built there. I can visualize right away where the holes are going to be, not in detail, but in general, nine holes here and nine holes there, or something like that. The rest is simpler. You have to draw up plans, but above all you have to know the terrain and be on the ground supervising the construction”.
One of the lessons I learned from Jones is that routing, the layout of the field, is the most important thing, because it’s like what a tailor does, once he cuts the material, you can’t change much. For me, the routing is the fundamental thing. It’s very easy to find a place for a phenomenal green, but once you decide that here I’m going to do a par 3 or a par 4, that’s going to determine the rest of the routing, how the other holes are going to be. There are exceptions, for example at Cypress Point, which has two par 3s in a row, 15 and 16, on the most fabulous terrain in the world, and there the architect Alister MacKenzie did very well because they are almost the most famous holes in the world. But it’s easy to fall into the trap of making a beautiful hole that can then detract from the rest of the routing.”
-What is your opinion of the Costa del Sol golf courses in general?
-We have six or seven courses among the best in Europe, and in some of them the maintenance, such as Valderrama, Finca Cortesín and others, is of a very high level. That requires a lot of money, and most courses in Europe cannot reach that level. Another remarkable course is Las Brisas, where Kyle Phillips has done a great job in the renovation. The club has invested a lot of money, but the result is excellent – I’m impressed.
On the new star designers who are now in the media spotlight, Cabell says that some are “perhaps too interested in the visual effect of the course, in aesthetics, in doing something very spectacular to the eye”. And he brings Tom Doak to the fore: “He is very talented, I have visited several of his courses in the United States, but I don’t like them because he often “buries dinosaurs” in his greens, that is, they have too many undulations, and the ball can move a lot even if you have hit a good shot, so the greens are unfair”.
At the end of the interview, the director of the resort, Ken Flockhart, appears on the terrace of the La Cala clubhouse and Robinson begins to talk to him about the time that has passed since he played the first of the resort’s three courses. He does it without nostalgia, smiling, with a slow tone…. That’s Cabell, a quiet man.
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