Taboo Muskoka Golf Course

The small town of Gravenhurst lies to the north of Toronto – declaring itself “The gateway to the Muskoka Lakes” – and it’s here that the fairways at Taboo Golf Resort are draped over the majestic Canadian Shield, routed through towering trees and unique rock formations of Muskoka.

Florida-based architect Ron Garl designed the course here – his other Canadian projects include Heritage Point, Maple Downs (remodel) and Wooden Sticks – and it opened for play in 2002.

The spectacular par 71 Taboo course measures between 5,187 and 7,340 yards (depending on which set of tees is used) and many of the holes dogleg one way or other from tee to green. The quartet of short holes on the scorecard (at holes 3, 7, 11 and 15) is particularly attractive.

Don’t forget to warm up for the round by playing the other course on the property, the 9-hole Sands layout, designed by the late, great Stanley Thompson back in 1928. Visitors should also note that green fees for Taboo include mandatory cart hire.

Masters Champion Mike Weir is a big fan of the layout, saying, “Each time I play here, the beauty overwhelms me. The course is both playable and challenging. I love it here.”

In 2019, architect Alan Chudnovsky and the Taboo maintenance team embarked on a bunker renovation project, reshaping the hazards, installing drainage liners then using capillary concrete liners before adding new sand and re-sodding the bunker edges.

The following article was written by golf course architect Ron Garl and is an edited extract from Volume Four of Golf Architecture: A Worldwide Perspective. Reproduced with kind permission. To obtain a copy of the book, email Paul Daley at fswing@bigpond.net.au

In 1994, brothers Ely and Norm Reisman, developers based in Toronto, had a vision of creating a world-class golfing resort in the Muskoka region, just north of Toronto. They scoured the area looking for a site with the potential for laying out a course which would live up to their expectations.

The Muskoka region is a vast area of breath taking scenery. Centuries ago, retreating glaciers carved great slabs of granite from the earth, leaving an incredible landscape as a testament to nature’s awesome power. These same glaciers left the landscape dappled with more than a thousand lakes of pristine water and large sand deposits covered with soaring pines and maples.

The brothers spent several years searching the region and finally settled on a beautiful, rolling tract of land on the southern tip of Lake Muskoka. It was at this juncture that I received a call from Ely and Norm’s partner, Haydn Matthews, asking me to travel up to Ontario to look at “the most significant site you will ever see”.

The proposed site was some 1,200 acres in area and was part of an existing hotel located on the very edge of Lake Muskoka. My first impression was sheer excitement at being given the opportunity of laying out a top golf course on such inspiring topography.

Less experienced designers could be intimidated by the prospect of building a golf course on the rugged landscape of the Muskokas, but I was thrilled by the possibility. I saw in the unyielding forests and ancient granite an opportunity to create a truly inspiring golf experience.

In developing the layout at Taboo a thorough exhaustive site analysis and intimate knowledge of the site was imperative. We knew we had to be patient and attentive to the surrounding environment and we spent nearly two years of time and effort on the routing of the course to work around the magnificent rock outcroppings and specimen trees.

The major influence on the routing was the rock outcrops. Changes and variations to the routing and later on in the grading of every hole was required not only for aesthetics, playability and strategy, but for economic reasons. The cost to blast and remove one cubic metre of granite is about twenty times the cost to move and shape one cubic metre of soil.

The golf holes at Taboo had to be found; the course had to sit softly on the landscape, and we didn’t give up searching for the best eighteen holes until we knew we had it perfected. The total volume of earthworks came to only 80,000 cubic metres of earth and 15,000 cubic metres of rock blasting to accommodate the eighteen holes and practice facility.

In modern-day design this is almost unheard of, where upwards of 500,000 cubic metres is commonplace. The minimalist approach we adopted at Taboo is more typical of the traditional courses of old and we were extremely proud of this achievement.