A golf course mothballed seven years ago has been revived and is now one of the Caribbean’s hottest and most desired luxury resort locations.
Apes Hill Barbados, situated at 1,000 feet along the west coast of the island, recently was named the Caribbean’s Best Golf Course at the World Golf Awards.
It’s an honor renowned golf course architect Ron Kirby–who was lured by a close friend to tackle the job in his mid-80s–would have been humbled by, considering it was his last design before passing away in August 2023.
That friend was none other than Roddy Carr, whose late father J.B. is regarded as Ireland’s greatest amateur golfer.
Carr had been involved in consulting on other golf projects on the island and beyond, and was approached in 2019 by new Apes Hill owner Glenn Chamandy, a Canadian investor and founder of international clothing giant Gildan.
The original design, which opened in 2009, was executed by Landmark Golf, who hired two Pete Dye associates for the project. Carr says it was great routing, but extremely difficult for the average resort golfer with a 17-handicap to play.
“The dog didn’t like the dog food,” Carr says of the reaction of golfers to the Landmark design. “The average person couldn’t play it. Yeah. I went there once and it was nice scenery, but there was no connection to utilizing the assets of the gullies, the bearded fig trees and the incredible views. It was just a ball breaker. So, it basically fizzled out.”
The course was closed for two years before Chamandy stepped in and got the ball rolling with Carr on a re-imagined course set on the resort’s stunning 475 acres.
Carr laughs as he recalls the first meeting with Chamandy, who has been a regular on Barbados for two decades.
“He came with his dog, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts,” Carr says. “He was a cool guy, nice guy. I said ‘Glenn, I’ve been around a long time and I’ve seen guys like you. Eight out of 10 of you just get taken to the cleaners because you don’t know what you’re doing.'”
Carr asked a simple question of the wealthy investor.
“What do you want, Glenn?” Carr said. “He said, ‘I want a place here where people can come that are active, can have fun together and build me a 19th hole.'”
The two shook hands and Carr’s wheels began turning. He quickly thought of Kirby, whom he had worked with on about a dozen jobs over the years. He wasn’t sure if the aging architect would be interested, but he felt it was well worth a shot.
Kirby worked with Robert Trent Jones Sr., Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus over the years before starting his own firm and designing the iconic Old Head Golf Links in Ireland, among many others over a more than five-decade career.
“Ron worked with the best architects and was a student of the game,” Carr says. “I knew it was a little unusual because he was 85 years old, but I also knew he was the man for the job.”
Kirby flew to Barbados and loved the property.
“Ron was one of the great sketchers and I still have all of his sketches from the project,” Carr says. “I walked the course with Ron and I said, ‘now how do we make this playable?’
“We have two ocean views on six holes and that’s unique. So I asked, ‘How many wow factors can you give me Ron? How many picture frames can you give me?'”
Kirby rebuilt the golf course from scratch basically within the same routing, reducing the 107 bunkers by 50 and opening up various views that had previously been untapped.
“Now you can see all these beautiful old bearded fig trees and gullies and caves,” Carr says. “And there are millions of monkeys running around the place. It’s wildness, it’s magnificent.
“Ron got the idea that we wanted to frame very hole and make it look beautiful,” Carr added. “Look at a place like Pine Valley–every hole is a painting.”
The new Barbados course, which costs $300 to play, also includes a 19th hole, which is a replica of the island green at TPC Sawgrass in Florida, along with a par-3 course (Little Apes), and an award-winning practice and teaching facility.
The resort is less than 30 minutes from Grantley Adams International Airport, and visitors can seek out the world famous Mount Gay rum distillery while on the island.
The resort offers 12 three-bedroom and 14 four-bedroom villas–all equipped with their own private pool.
“They are luxurious, and have all the bells and whistles you could imagine,” says director of golf Jody Addison.
Apes Hill is a resort-residential property, and the only way to play the course is to stay in one of the rental villas. The resort is also Audubon International certified, featuring a 58-million gallon rain catchment reservoir, bee boxes, along with gardens that provide veggies and fruits grown fresh for the Apes Hill restaurants.
Barbados is also considered a safe island with a large mix of Canadians, Americans and Europeans.
“I’ve been coming here for 30 years and it’s the most sophisticated island in the Caribbean,” Carr says, “Barbados wins as a destination because the guys can play golf and the women like it because they can go out and about on their own and be safe here.”
The new golf course construction occurred during COVID-19 and reopened late in 2022, capping off a $60 million resort investment that places Apes Hill among the “must visit” locations in the Caribbean.
“It’s a pretty special place,” Addison says. “We’ve got a unique perspective where we’ve got unmatched views on the island. I don’t know how many places in the world that can say that you can look at two oceans standing on a tee box.”
“I’m not the designer, so I’m the guy who looks at the product and says ‘here are the assets we need from this,” Carr adds. “And I can say Apes Hill is the most enjoyable golf experience you can have. It’s not the toughest course, not the best – but it is the most enjoyable. Before Ron died he said ‘I just want people to finish and say, ‘God, I really enjoyed that. I’m coming back tomorrow.'”