Ahmad Skaik will be playing the Dubai Championship for the second time
Ahmad Skaik will be playing the Dubai Championship for the second time Image Credit: AAC

Fresh off his solid outing at the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship, where he became only the second Emirati to make the cut in the tournament’s history, Ahmad Skaik has been invited to this week’s AVIV Dubai Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates.

It will be a second successive appearance in the European Tour’s penultimate event of the year after Skaik hit the opening tee shot on the 49th National Day at last year’s inaugural edition, which was won by Antoine Rozner.

The UAE’s No.1 golfer missed the cut over the Fire course in that tournament, along with missed cuts in his two previous outings at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, but he’ll be hoping to use last week’s AAC success as a springboard to make the weekend at a European Tour event for the first time this week.

Skaik will be rubbing shoulder with some of the biggest names in the game, including Race to Dubai winners Tommy Fleetwood and Martin Kaymer along with Dubai Desert Classic champion Paul Casey as a strong international field assembles ahead of the double-header in Dubai.

European Ryder Cup Captain Padraig Harrington and Ryder Cup rookie Bernd Wiesberger will also tee it up alongside four-time European Tour winner Wallace, and past Rolex Series winners Min Woo Lee and Duabi resident Rafa Cabrera Bello, the latter recently winning his national open in impressive style earlier this month in Madrid.

The $1.5 million Dubai Championship will be played from November 11-14, preceding the final Rolex Series event of 2021, the DP World Tour Championship which will bring the curtain down on this year’s Race to Dubai on the neighbouring Earth Course.