Gulf’s first seaside course finished
6 October 2009
Sand dunes at Saadiyat Beach
The first seaside golf course in the Middle East is finished and in the final stages of grow-in. GCA was the first golf media outlet to visit the Saadiyat Beach course in Abu Dhabi, which was designed by Gary Player’s practice, in the first week of October.
The course is part of the hugely ambitious development of Saadiyat Island, a 27 sq km area of low-lying sandy terrain and salt marsh only a short distance away from downtown Abu Dhabi. Also planned as part of the US$28 billion Saadiyat project are a new highway linking the city with its international airport and on to Dubai (this opens later in October) and a range of flagship projects including a Guggenheim museum, designed by Frank Gehry, an outpost of the Louvre museum, a performing arts centre by Zaha Hadid, a marina, and more than 20 hotels. There will also be a second golf course, constructed among the salt flats, with tidal creeks separating holes, designed by the Robert Trent Jones II firm.
The Player course will be the first of the island’s amenities to be completed when it opens in January. Built using fill material dredged from the Persian Gulf, Saadiyat Beach features huge, intimidating bunkers (plus a few vicious small ones), and large, contoured greens that are mostly pushed up above their surrounds, and defended by short grass run-off areas.
Visual intimidation is a consistent theme at Saadiyat Island. Player and his project architect Jeff Lawrence have created a course that mostly has wide fairways offering golfers the chance to open their shoulders, but which, because of the huge areas of flashed-up sand, look far narrower than they are. The green on the waterside par three sixth hole appears to be a tiny strip from the tee, especially the back one, which makes the hole a dizzying 236 yards, but in fact, there is plenty of space on the putting surface.
The standout hole is the short par four tenth, ironic on a golf course that measures close to 7,800 yards. With a huge waste-type bunker all the way down the left, and cutting deeply into the fairway around 70 yards short of the green, and a series of brutal pot bunkers up the right, the hole could be drivable for some – it is 338 yards from the back tee, and plays down the prevailing breeze. Many golfers will feel a three is on offer, and it is – but equally a six or a seven could end up on the card very easily.
Saadiyat’s eighteenth tee is set hard against the beach, on which turtles nest, and which is protected. General manager DJ Flanders from Troon Golf, who will run the course, and who is managing the grow-in, and his team have much work to do to get ready for that January opening – but Saadiyat Beach should be an exciting addition to the UAE golf scene.