Els club Dubai is one of my favourite places to practice and play when I visit Dubai. It has a Butch Harmon academy with perfect practice facilities and staff. The academy is run by Justin Parsons who is a great guy and teaches pro’s on tour and amateurs like myself. The staff is very friendly and service minded.
driving range
The course is placed behind Dubai in the desert, so the scenery is not fantastic, but the course condition is fantastic and a good challenge. It plays quite long from the back tees and is a really tough challenge
the course
Opening hole a relatively straight forward par 4 if you stay out of the bunkers.
Looks pretty straight forward and it is if you hit the green in the right place. Basically you have a runoff to the right of the green and if the pin is as you see on the this picture you should aim for the middle of the green and leave yourself a difficult uphill put. Left leaves a tricky chip or bunker shot.
Great risk/reward par 5, where you go left of the bunkers and have a relatively short 2nd shot. Normally thats the route I take and hopefully leave myself a shot to the green.
Nice par 4 where you leave yourself a wedge to the green. As you can probably see from the picture the approach shot needs to be good to avoid either being short and going down the slope or long leaving an almost impossible chip down the green.
There are few holes with water on the Els Club, but the water really comes into play on the 8th. You either lay up short of the right hand side bunker and leave a longer second shot, or drive it between the bunker and water. For me it depends on my confidence with the driver, but in any case the second shot is tricky, especially if the pin is on the left hand side of the green where the water is more in play.
One of the most difficult holes on the course. Dogleg to the left with the tree and bunkers really well placed, which makes your drive very important. You can go left of the bunkers and try to reach the fairway which is ideal. Otherwise a good drive down the middle and past the tree is also good, but leaves a long second shot.
Another difficult par 4 with water on the right and bunkers on the left to catch your drive if you miss the fairway. Second shot the water is also in play on the right, so you need two really good shots and I am happy to walk off with a par on this hole.
One of the easier holes on the course and I suppose some will try and drive the green. I normally lay up to a good distance and was lucky once to make eagle on the hole. Didn’t see it myself unfortunately, but some of my playing partners watched it go in….nice one…
Tricky par 3 as its relatively long to a green surrounded by bunkers/waste land. It requires a high trajectory to keep it on the green and especially when the pin is to the left side where the green is very narrow.
Long, but straight forward par 5. Be aware of the runoff areas around the green. 3rd shot needs to be accurate to stay on the green.
There are several nice courses in Dubai, but I normally find that Els Club is very well maintained with speedy greens and a really good test of golf. Emirates and Creek are also really good courses.
