Atlantis, The Palm

The Emirates Golf Club is the inspiration of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and his Royal Pavilion – styled in the fashion of a Bedouin tent – nestles behind the 8th green. The Majlis course opened for play in 1988 and it was the first 18-hole grass golf course to open in the Middle East. The layout follows a blueprint by Karl Litten and it’s literally carved through the desert. Narrow green ribbons of fairway wind their way through natural slightly undulating terrain. Expect to play a few sand shots at The Emirates Club. Without doubt, the Majlis course is one of the finest layouts in the United Arab Emirates and it’s the well-known venue of the Dubai Desert Classic tournament, which always attracts the world’s best players. The Majlis course stretches out to some 7,301 yards from the tips with par set at 72. Tall desert dunes frame the perimeter of the course and numerous salt and freshwater lakes come into play on several holes.

The Dubai Creek & Yacht Club grabbed considerable world-wide attention on opening in 1993 when golf in the Middle East was in its infancy. The club is located minutes from the international airport and calling this "a golfer’s paradise" is not wrong. Well groomed fairways and greens are a feature and the challenge to par is tough from the tournament tees. The course plays a little easier from the forward tees making it most suitable for all golfers, whether here for a Desert Classic or just some quality holiday golf.

The Dubai Hills Estate is set within the Mohammad Bin Rashid City quarter of Dubai and it’s a development from the Emaar property company, which includes the Burj Khalifa building in its portfolio, along with another couple of golf courses at Arabian Ranches and Address Montgomerie. It’s a 2018 European Golf Design production, with Gary Johnston the lead architect, and the course is set out as two returning nines – the outward half in an anti-clockwise fashion then the inward half in a clockwise manner – with fairways continually changing direction to create a “big reveal” from one hole to the next. The site was formerly a camel stable on a largely flat property but, with much of the course laid out at a lower grade because fill was required for the residential areas, it means that quite a few of the holes are played in isolation within little valleys, below the level of the surrounding houses.

Arabian Ranches Golf Club opened in February 2004 and this was Ian Baker-Finch's first collaboration with Nicklaus Design. Previously the area was grazing land for camels and gazelle, and Baker-Finch – who knows a bit about links courses having won at Royal Birkdale in the 1991 Open – has turned Arabian Ranches into a reasonable facsimile of a links course… or as near as one could get in the deserts of the Gulf. The topography was not ideal for a golf course, but the architect resisted the temptation to move huge volumes of soil (only 80,000 cubic metres was moved). The result is a nicely crafted course that flows well through the 247 acres of desert; 66 acres of which are grassed and 55 acres of which are planted with desert vegetation. Shots that miss the immaculate grass of the fairways and greens often enter the ‘sandy wasteland’ with its indigenous shrubs and bushes.