Seizing the opportunity Saadiyat Beach in Abu Dhabi has been reconfigured and had original design elements fine-tuned. For Saadiyat Beach Golf Club in Abu Dhabi, the repurposing of a portion of its golf course brought the risk of weakening the layout. The club, however, saw it as an opportunity to create new, welldesigned holes and to reinstate and fine-tune various aspects of the original design. The course, designed by Gary Player’s firm, opened in 2010 on Saadiyat Island, ten kilometres to the north of Abu Dhabi’s city centre. It is routed around five-star hotels, has views of the Persian Gulf and can be set up to play over 7,800 yards from the back tees. The project has included eliminating the original beachfront par-three seventeenth with a new par three built elsewhere on the property. Sean Quinn, senior design associate at Nicklaus Design, produced all drawings, technical specifications and oversaw the project, working closely with Gary Player Design to maintain the integrity of the original design. “The seventeenth and eighteenth holes needed to be moved 20 metres away from the boundary,” says Quinn. “Consequently, the main irrigation lake needed to be filled in by 20 metres as well, to compensate for the moved eighteenth fairway. This made the project very complicated. “Filling the lake reduced the lake surface area and a new liner needed to be installed. Practically, the lake needed to be emptied, but this presented a serious challenge of how to ensure the irrigation system could continue to operate uninterrupted. The lost lake volume then needed to be replaced by building a new lined lake upstream on the tenth hole.” In addition to the construction of the new irrigation storage lake, work on the back nine included moving the thirteenth green forward by 80 metres and shifting the back tee further back; and creating a new par-three fourteenth that plays in a similar direction to the eliminated seventeenth. The original fourteenth has become the fifteenth, with the tees adjusted to create space for the new fourteenth green. The new tees create 94 REPORT
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