Just 10 years ago, this week’s Desert Classic could not have taken place. David Davies on the miracle of golf in Dubai
Every evening at the Emirates Golf Club, the tables are dressed for dinner. Severely starched tablecloths lie underneath the silver service, with the wine glasses stretching away in serried ranks towards the centrepiece, a cluster of white carnations. All is opulence: even in the loo the muzak is Mozart.
Just down the road at the Dubai Creek course, where the Desert Classic was played last week, the tables are on a terrace under palm trees lit with strips of fairy lights, by the side of a swimming pool fed by a waterfall.
A reception was being held to announce the new season’s designs by Hugo Boss, for this the most fashionable of sports. All is elegance, especially the women who, once inside, discard their full-facial covering.
The clubhouses at both courses are, in the best sense of the word, fantastic. The Creek architect took as his inspiration the sails of the dhows that still pass close by on the creek that splits the city of Dubai in two. >From a distance, it looks like a smaller, slightly spikier version of the Sydney Opera House.
The Emirates design is based on an encampment of Bedouin tents, and in the early-morning light and again in the evening the building resembles them uncannily. Soaring sails and billowing tents: these are some of the great palaces of sport, imaginative but functional, practical and yet, within, pandering to every whim.
They would be extraordinary structures wherever they were situated, but the fact that they are in Dubai, surrounded by sand dunes that stretch into the Arabian Desert, and the further fact that they exist to service the sport of golf, makes them almost outlandish. For golf needs grass and, given natural conditions, there would not be a blade of the stuff in Dubai.
The Emirates courses, for instance, exist on a huge square of irrigated land by the side of the road to Jebel Ali. Inside the boundary fence, all that needs to be is lush. Outside it, only a few sickly shrubs interrupt one of the most barren landscapes in the world. An injured man would probably die of thirst in about two days.
Why then, and how, does golf exist in this place? The answer, of course, is pure commercialism. The rulers of this oil-rich state recognised that if they were to capitalise on their resources, they needed Western technology, with Westerners to operate it.
And if they were to be brought in for long spells of work in alien conditions, they needed some familiar playthings when the time came to relax. Hence the Emirates Golf Club, hence Dubai Creek Golf Club, hence Jebel Ali Golf Club and hence, in October, the first nine holes of a projected 36 at Emirates Hills Golf Club.
That’s the “why” of it. The “how” is relatively simple. Take one desert, shape some holes, add grass seed and oodles of water, and jump back. Grass grows very well in the desert – given enough water. It takes 7,6-million litres of it every day during the summer to keep the two courses at Emirates in top condition.
Such huge amounts of water are not normally available in a desert, of course – which is why they are deserts in the first place. This is where the enormous desalination plant in Dubai comes in, and the government. Golf courses are still regarded as official projects and, as such, do not have to pay for their water. If they had to, golf would not be financially viable.
Nor would such grandiose projects as Emirates Hills, a full-scale Floridian concept, with two courses designed by Colin Montgomerie and Greg Norman, featuring fairways lined on either side by housing. The fairways are intended to be the finest in the world.
One recent desert complex, built in Abu Dhabi by locally based architect Peter Harradine, has 1E600 water sprinklers to cope with 36 holes. On the Montgomerie course alone, it is intended that there should be 3E500. Harradine reckons that Dhs25-million (about R42-million) should be enough for 18 holes in the desert. “It won’t be at Emirates Hills,” he says. “That project is completely over the top. Heaven knows what they’ll spend there.”
The housing will be of the same calibre as the course. In Florida, the housing tends to be quite nice. In Dubai, it will be the last word in luxury, each building a mini-mansion. Each will have a courtyard with a fountain and the surrounds and flooring will be marble. The hanging drapes will be silk. As Montgomerie, who flies in seat 1A everywhere he goes, says: “I know about first class, but Dubai first class is of a different standard. Emirates Hills is going to be absolutely fabulous. I’m so glad to be associated with it.”
The Montgomerie course will be completed in roughly 12 months and will be followed by Norman’s design, built to the same specifications. When that is finished, there will be 99 holes available in Dubai, more than enough to cater for the original number of intended customers, and now the government is looking to make a golfing holiday destination of a place previously noted principally for shifting, searing sands.
Not much more than a decade ago, a golf course in the Dubai desert would have seemed more like a mirage. Now, unimaginable though it may be, they are the new oases.