As most familiar with the game at all levels know by now, golf across the United Arab Emirates has grown at an alarming rate. In Dubai in particular, the scale of the expansion in the space of three decades is tough to overstate and makes for a spectacular before and after shot.
From one course surrounded by desert and cast adrift from civilisation to a litany of elite venues that have become the focal point of a sport booming in this part of the world. It really is little wonder the DP World Tour visits the UAE so frequently.
One person who has been there almost through it all is Chris May, the CEO of Dubai Golf who moved to the region in 1999 to become the assistant manager at Dubai Creek. Despite plans to stay for five years and return to the UK, Chris liked it so much he never left, so who better to speak to about the ever-changing landscape and the latest innovation aimed at making life easier for tourists.
“When I first came, Dubai wasn’t really even a tourist destination, let alone a golf destination – it was very different. The Emirates Golf Club was stuck out on its own and it was a real trek out of town, and the Creek was in the middle of the city,” Chris tells me.
“It was really at the start of the tourism boom and to see what the city has evolved into now, and really grown and developed up towards Emirates Golf Club, which is the main part of the city now, is almost unbelievable. The amount of buildings and development that’s happened, the road infrastructure, the hotels, the restaurants, the malls, the number of additional golf courses that have been built in that time period is quite incredible.
“In ‘99, there were just three golf courses and now there are 22 in the UAE. The population was around 800,000 when I moved to Dubai and I think it’s 4.2 million now. So it has grown quite a lot. You’ve now got over 100,000 bedrooms in the city and many of those bedrooms get filled by golfers every year.
“There are 11 golf courses in Dubai. Those numbers have just grown organically and when new golf courses come along, the golf rounds have been filled. Dubai has done really well in terms of matching that growth from a supply and…
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