Top Middle East Golf Courses – 2014
Top 100 Golf Courses updates its Middle Eastern golf course rankings
12th January 2014
Top 100 Golf Courses, the most informed and dedicated ranking website, currently features golf courses in eight of thirteen countries designated to the Middle East, with six of these eight countries each boasting one top course within its territory.
The spectacular centrepiece of the Wave Resort project, located just outside Muscat in Oman, is the impressive Greg Norman-designed Almouj golf complex that features both a championship 18-hole course and a floodlit 9-hole par three layout. Almouj, which opened nine holes in 2011, now heads the Omani rankings, pushing the Paul Thomas-designed Muscat Hills into second place. There is no doubt that Muscat is becoming a golf destination in its own right.
Nobody would deny that there is plenty of golf to be played in the United Arab Emirates and such is the quality of the golf facilities that we’ve now extended our 2012 chart for this federation of emirates from ten to fifteen courses.
Abu Dhabi and Dubai (two of the UAE’s seven emirates) still compete tooth and nail for golfing visitors and while Dubai wins the golf course numbers game, Abu Dhabi can rightly boast about Kyle Phillips’s Yas Links – which, incidentally, many golfers believe we should have included in our new 2014 World Top 100 rankings.
Five new UAE courses join forces with the previous top ten to create our latest UAE top fifteen. Three courses, Montgomerie Dubai, Arabian Ranches and Tower Links are promoted to the rankings from Gem status and they are joined by two brand new entries, Al Hamra and the terrific 9-hole Jebel Ali, which hosts the Omega Dubai Desert Classic Challenge Match, a precursor to the European Tour event.
For the first time, we’ve produced a ranking table for the Middle East region. Naturally it’s dominated by courses from the UAE, but there are a few surprises to be discovered within the list. If you don’t believe us, you might like to check out Pete Dye’s layout at Caesarea Golf Club in Israel or Peter Harradine’s Doha Golf Club, home to the Qatar Masters. Monty’s course at Bahrain’s Royal Golf Club is at least equal to his design in the UAE and Peter Harradine’s Sahara in Kuwait is a floodlit oasis.
We always welcome feedback at Top 100 Golf Courses, so feel free to let us know what you think of our golf course coverage in the Middle East – maybe there are other layouts in this region that are worthy of exposure on this website?
Top 100 doesn’t claim to be “definitive” but we like to think we create the “most informed” golf course rankings in the business. If you’ve played any of our featured Middle Eastern courses, we’d love to know your thoughts, so why not post a course review?
Jim McCann
Editor
www.top100golfcourses.com
Click the link to see our Top Golf Course rankings for the Middle East in detail.
Click the link to see the latest UAE Top 15 in detail
