Heaven, according to an old Talking Heads song, is a place where nothing ever happens, and the island of Anguilla has banked on that particular vision of paradise for the last twenty years. Known for having some of the most beautiful and least crowded beaches in the Caribbean, Anguilla’s attention has always seemed focused outward, on the ocean. You could be excused for thinking it’s easier to find things to do in and on the water (swimming, snorkeling, sailing) than on the island’s scant thirty-five square miles of land. Even the high-end resorts and spas that have made Anguilla’s reputation—Malliouhana Hotel & Spa, CuisinArt Resort & Spa (which recently announced an expansion that should be completed in 2008), the Cap Juluca—are really all about perfecting the art of relaxation. Outside their gates, there’s no real town to speak of, no place to do any shopping, a few excellent restaurants but no real nightlife. The weather forecast reads like a joke: mostly sunny, high eighty-four, repeat until eternity. And there’s no question that this low-key approach has struck a chord with tourists: Over the past decade or so, Anguilla has risen above its neighbors in the Caribbean archipelago to become one of the hottest luxury destinations in the world.
That’s all well and good for some, but I am among those who have always secretly balked at that idea of heaven. Two or three days on a perfect beach, staring across the perfect water at the perfect horizon, and I start to go a little nuts. Scenery and tranquility are nice for a while, but at some point I need to get up from the beach chair and do something—like, say, hit a golf ball. And for years, Anguilla’s only outlet for that particular desire was a scrubby pitch-and-putt course on the east end of the salt pond right behind the rum factory in Sandy Ground. Not exactly a strong incentive to pack your clubs.
But a trip to the new Temenos Golf Club—a gorgeous, seven-thousand-plus-yard Greg Norman design that’s part of an in-progress St. Regis Resort at the island’s southwestern end—has left me a whole lot more sympathetic to Anguilla’s claim to nirvana. The resort itself won’t be fully operational until the end of next year (although three multiple-bedroom villas recently opened), but the course and clubhouse are open and, for a while at least, guests from anywhere on the island can play there for a daily fee. A deal for a second, Jack Nicklaus-designed course at the other end of the island is on the drawing board. With the savvy that’s come to characterize it, Anguilla is finally reaching out to the last holdout group of big spenders it hasn’t been able to woo: golfers.
That savvy is partly a product of the comparatively late start Anguilla got in developing its tourism industry. Its status as an island overshadowed by its better-known neighbors is centuries old. Long before tourism became the Leeward Islands’ principal industry, Anguilla—with its sandy soil and scant freshwater supply—was deemed so unprofitable by the various colonial powers that owned it (Spain, France and ultimately England) that its sparse population of subsistence farmers, fishermen and smugglers was largely left to its own devices.
For nearly a hundred and fifty years, though, the real thorn in Anguilla’s side was not England but the nearby island of St. Kitts. In 1824 the British government, for its own convenience, lumped the two islands and neighboring Nevis into a kind of paper confederation. But because St. Kitts was the largest and richest of the three and because the seat of the government was there, that island got all the royal benefits and Anguilla got scraps.
More than a century of that kind of treatment took its toll. Then, in the early 1960s, when Britain was looking to scale back its colonial commitments worldwide (historical developments like the abolition of slavery had turned its colonies into at least as much of a financial burden as an asset), the Brits announced their intention to declare St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla a permanent, self-governing entity, dependent upon England only in the unlikely case of military attack.
Anguillans howled. It was the worst of both worlds: no more association with, or financial and technical aid from, Mother England, and their subjugation to St. Kitts (and to its then-governor, who openly ridiculed Anguillans) set in stone. With the independent streak that centuries of enforced self-reliance had bred into them, they refused to go along with it. On the surface, it seemed like yet another 1960s rebellion against imperial authority, but with a twist: Anguillans wanted to remain a British colony. They just wanted to eliminate the middleman.
It seems like a simple distinction, but somehow the British weren’t able to grasp it—leading to one of the great diplomatic and military fiascoes of the twentieth century. Under the bizarre impression that they had a full-scale revolt on their hands—despite the fact that Anguilla had no army, no police force and next to no weapons of any kind—the British anchored two destroyers off the Anguillan coast and landed more than three hundred elite paratroopers, with a division of London bobbies for good measure, in the middle of the dumbstruck island. No shots were fired, though reportedly a few goats were frightened. The Brits were globally ridiculed for their tin-eared diplomacy and military overkill. The episode became known as the "Bay of Piglets."
In the embarrassed aftermath, Anguilla got in 1980 what it had wanted all along: freedom from the trumped-up "federation" but with its status as a British dependency intact. The troops had stayed on to build some much-needed infrastructure (islanders didn’t even have phone service until 1972), and Anguilla, for the first time, began to attract visitors.
The Anguillans’ late start enabled them to learn from of some of their Caribbean neighbors about trading short-term profit for the long-term costs of overdevelopment. With nearby islands such as St. Thomas and Antigua all but maxed out in terms of expansion, the Anguillan government committed itself more than twenty-five years ago to keeping development small and upscale on the premise that people would pay more in return for less crowded conditions—what tradesmen on the island refer to as "keeping the volume low." New construction is still sharply limited: The island could build ten more resorts tomorrow and fill them with tourists the next day, but eventually word would get out that Anguilla had become less distinguishable from the rest of the Caribbean and the buzz would start to drift elsewhere. The tax, so to speak, for this underdevelopment comes in the form of higher prices for everything; island restaurants, for instance, tend to be surprisingly costly. Still, as one restaurant owner told me, "You can go to St. Thomas and pay fifty dollars for a hotel room and walk down to the beach and be one of ten thousand people. Or you can come here and be one of maybe twenty-five hundred guests on the whole island."
That’s the Anguillans’ vision of the place, and they have stayed true to it. Their only airport is too small to handle many commercial flights, so, like a lot of travelers, I arrived by boat from neighboring (and more developed) St. Martin. (Flights are available from Antigua, San Juan and St. Martin.) Goats still wander freely across many of the island’s narrow roads, lined by one-story homes in a typically bright Caribbean palette. There’s no overcrowded town, no real tourist-trap section. Outside the modest gates of the various high-end resorts and villas (most of which, including Temenos, are on the southwestern shore), the Anguillan landscape looks much like it did two decades ago. It was a delight, frankly, to visit a country so dependent on tourism that doesn’t look at all touristy, that’s managed not to turn into a sanitized, Disneyland version of itself. The island’s eastern end is still a working fishing village, and it looks like it. As previously noted, I’m not a beach guy, but as we drove by Shoal Bay East—considered by beach aficionados to be the premier strand in the entire Caribbean—my cab driver insisted that I get out and walk around for a few minutes. It seemed a miracle that any place so beautiful could be so uncrowded, though of course it’s really less a miracle than a marketing strategy—one that’s worked well so far.
Malliouhana opened for business in 1984, Cap Juluca in 1988, CuisinArt in 1999. But none of them included golf. Elsewhere around the Caribbean, championship-caliber courses were popping up one at a time, from Pete Dye’s famous Teeth of the Dog seaside layout in the Dominican Republic in 1971 to Tom Fazio’s Green Monkey course on Barbados in 2004. In general, the Caribbean golf equation is simple: The smaller (and usually more arid) the island, the tougher the economic and environmental logistics of installing a world-class track there. More built-up destinations like Jamaica or Puerto Rico have many great courses to choose from. But on relatively tiny Anguilla, it took decades for the various stars to align.
Norman’s Temenos course vaults instantly onto the short list of the best eighteens in the Caribbean. It’s not the funkiest layout—like Anguilla itself, the terrain is rather flat compared with some of its island neighbors. There are a number of straight-ahead par fours that feature well-bunkered, elevated greens and water up one side. But at seventy-two-hundred yards from the tips, the course is more than challenging enough.
And the winds! Although none of the holes brings the ocean itself into play, there’s no mistaking Temenos for anything but a seaside course: Even the simplest par threes require a lot of ingenuity to hit and hold the greens. The fairways are generous, but the penalties for missing them are severe—on most holes there’s about an eight-foot strip of low rough that gives way to a "native area" of packed sand filled with indigenous flora that is itself filled with Anguillan critters that scattered invisibly but noisily at my first step in there to search for a stray shot. On the fifth hole, I surprised a lizard (or perhaps it was the other way around) that had found some shade beside the tee marker. The whole course is almost absurdly scenic, with view after postcard view of the shockingly blue Caribbean and the mountains of St. Martin beyond.
The St. Regis-Temenos development (ninety-six villa residences managed by St. Regis, twenty-eight single-family homes and the resort itself) is opening in a somewhat piecemeal fashion; it will all be up and running, and no doubt booked to capacity, by the end of 2008. A new luxury-yacht marina is scheduled for construction on Anguilla as well. It’s hard for any country to resist the siren call of money. Profit versus self-restraint: Given time enough, the same side always seems to win that battle. Maybe no place on Earth can maintain the right balance forever, but some spots do have moments where the balance seems just right, and Anguilla’s moment is right now.
What’s New in the Caribbean
Temenos Golf Club and the forthcoming St. Regis Resort in Anguilla are the latest in a series of luxury Caribbean destinations featuring great golf that have opened in recent years. Here’s a rundown of the some of the best:
BRAND SPANKING NEW
Blue Tip Course at the Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman
Although he had 120 acres to work with—enough for eighteen holes—Greg Norman decided to build just nine and let them breathe, so to speak. His environmentally sensitive design (a 3,515-yard par thirty-six) wraps around a saltwater lagoon, featuring water on all but one hole. The course opened in October and is available to residents and guests of the Ritz-Carlton resort, which stretches from the Caribbean to the island’s North Sound. Amenities include a Nick Bolletieri tennis academy, two restaurants overseen by chef Eric Ripert of New York’s Le Bernadin, and a camp for children that’s run by Jean-Michel Cousteau. 345-943-9000, ritzcarlton.com
Punta Espada Golf Club at Cap Cana, Dominican Republic
Opened in November, this is the first of three Jack Nicklaus courses to be built at Cap Cana, a nearly ten-square-mile resort community at the easternmost point of the Dominican Republic. The Golden Bear’s answer to Dye’s Teeth of the Dog at Casa de Campo, Punta Espada (meaning "tip of the sword") takes its name from the distinctive serrated coastline. Eight holes are carved into a flat coral shelf washed by the sea; the rest run along a limestone bluff. Most memorable is the 249-yard par-three thirteenth, which plays downwind over a cove to a seaside green. 800-785-2198, capcana.com
Temenos Golf Club, Anguilla
Until the St. Regis Resort opens, stay at one of the property’s four- or five-bedroom villas (264-498-9000; strategicresidences.com; from $7,000 a night) or at one of Anguilla’s premier resorts—Malliouhana (800-835-0796; malliouhana.com; from $640 a night), Cap Juluca (888-858-5822; capjuluca.com; from $825 a night), and CuisinArt (800-943-3210; cuisinartresort.com; from $695 a night). Greens fees at Temenos (264-222-8200; temenosgolfclub.com) start at $415.
RECENT ARRIVALS
The Abaco Club on Winding Bay, the Bahamas
This "sporting retreat," which opened in 2004 on Great Abaco, is the brainchild of English entrepreneur Peter de Savary. As at his other properties, including the Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle in Scotland (which he’s since sold) and Cherokee Plantation in South Carolina, de Savary hired Scotsmen Donald Steel and Tom Mackenzie to design a golf course—in this case, a so-called tropical links that features an out-and-back loop of holes at sea level followed by a rousing finish atop a bluff. Although the Abaco Club is private, nonmembers are permitted one visit. 888-303-2765, theabacoclub.com
Green Monkey Course at Sandy Lane, Barbados
Tom Fazio’s Caribbean showpiece, the Green Monkey was dramatically carved out of an old quarry. It’s open only to guests of the British-inflected beachfront resort, and at a hefty cost: $350 for hotel guests; $4,000 per tee time for non-guests. Also by Fazio, Sandy Lane’s Country Club course hosted the World Golf Championships-World Cup in December. 246-444-2000, sandylane.com
Trump International Golf Club at Raffles Resort, Canouan Island, the Grenadines
Donald Trump resuscitated what, in the post-9/11 tourism drop-off, had become a moribund resort, casino and Jim Fazio-designed golf course on this quiet island in the Grenadines. After an infusion of $40 million, all three reopened in the summer of 2004 to glowing reviews. The course gambols over a series of ravines and dazzles golfers with views of crescent beaches and the island’s imposing Mount Royal. 784-458-8000, canouan.com
