Heavyweight stars and leading businesses predict the Middle East will be at the forefront of global golf development in the coming years.
By Nazvi Careem

World number-one Tiger Woods, who recently completed an emotional victory at the 135th British Open in Liverpool, has lent his weight to the growing reputation of Middle East golf by signing up for the Dubai Desert Classic in 2007.

Woods, who won his 11th major championship at Hoylake in July, has agreed to defend his Dubai title, which he won earlier this year at Emirates Golf Club with a dramatic sudden-death play-off victory over South African Ernie Els.

The appearance in Dubai of one of the world’s most recognisable sporting stars has wider significance, not so much for American Woods himself, but for the Middle East’s rising status as a viable arena for top-class golf tournaments and as a golfing destination.

Indeed, the Dubai Desert Classic is one of three tournaments in the region sanctioned by the European PGA Tour, the others being the Abu Dhabi Championship and the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters, which enjoys joint backing from the Asian Tour and this year featured Fijian star Vijay Singh as well as Els.

Dubai’s aggressive golf marketing policy has resulted in the development of at least 10 high quality golf courses in the Emirate, employing some of the world’s most famous course designers.

At the moment, the sport is still the domain of expatriates and tourists and these groups remain the main marketing targets for clubs and courses around the region. Despite the region’s growing reputation however, the main issue is convincing potential golf tourists, especially Americans, that the region is safe.

“Americans think Dubai is next door to Baghdad. The only thing we know about a war here is what we see on CNN,” an officer with the Dubai Department of Tourism said.

Still, Americans are among the most frequent golfing visitors to the Middle East. After all, as the officer said: “We got Tiger Woods.”

One couldn’t get more high profile than Woods, but the region has also hosted many other top-class players. Els and Singh add their names to an impressive list of pros who have played in the Middle East. Mark O’Meara, a former Masters and British Open champion, has played in Dubai, while Chris DiMarco, runner-up to Woods at this year’s British Open, won last year’s Abu Dhabi Championship.

O’Meara, Qatar champion Henrik Stenson and veteran Scot Colin Montgomerie continue to be ambassadors for Dubai golf. Montgomerie, in fact, has a golf club named after him in Dubai, having designed the par-72 layout at Emirates Hills in collaboration with Desmond Muirhead.

With dozens of golf courses spread across the region, the earlier novelty of playing on sandy fairways while carrying a portable Astroturf hitting surface is starting to wear off. Golf is helping the desert turn green, with courses from Bahrain’s Riffa Golf Club to the Doha Golf Club in Qatar offering an assortment of grass fairways and lush environments.

The greening of the Gulf is becoming a major industry with international financial firm KPMG predicting the Middle East to be at the forefront of global golf development in the coming years, and Dubai leading the way.

“Some of the highest profile developments are currently taking place in this region,” KPMG said in a recent study. “Dubai is seen by both golf tour operators and golf course architects as having one of the highest potentials of becoming a significant golf tourism destination.”

An Australian company, Golf World Group, is also jumping on the bandwagon and has plans to develop more than 100 golf courses in the Middle East over the next five years. The company has already organised golf exhibitions and conferences in Singapore, Hong Kong and China.

Stephen Allen, the group’s CEO, said that regardless of record highs for oil prices, the Middle East region could sustain an average of six new courses per country per year over five years.

Allen said the main problem with regard to golf course development in the Middle East was water and the environment, issues that will be tackled during major conferences in Paris and Milan in November 2007.

For the most part, though, Allen is confident in golf taking a stranglehold on the sports event tourism market. “Sports events tourism is not really understood that well but Dubai is one of the few places that have got it right and understand what it entails,” he said.

In terms of global sports tourism, golf ranks number three in the Middle East and this bodes really well for its future development.