I am delighted to have been invited again by Gulf News to write a daily diary for this week’s Ras Al Khaimah Classic at Al Hamra Golf Club.
So here goes. It is great to be back home in Dubai and I am so looking forward to this week’s RAK Classic, just one hour’s drive up the road. I will be staying in RAK all week.
I have never played the course, but I am told in the right conditions it is a shotmaker’s layout and is “gettable” as us pros say, with low scores up for grabs as the winning 72-hole total of 24-under at last week’s RAK Championship by Nicolai Hojgaard showed us all.
I have been to RAK before for a Q&A evening at the Waldorf Astoria with my wife Sofia and manager Richard Rayment with about 20 guests and RAK Tourism Development Authority, sponsors of the previous Challenge Tour events, probably about four years ago.
We took a helicopter from Dubai but the organiser (not RAKTDA) had not booked landing approvals at Al Hamra Village, so we had to land at RAK Airport which added to the length of the journey, both there and back, but in the end we all had a fun evening
I am playing on Tuesday in the Hero Challenge with my fellow Spaniard Alfredo Garcia-Heredia in a nine hole two-man scramble format. It will be a lot of fun playing in the same four-ball as the Hojgaard brothers: Nicolai and Rasmus. They are talented youngsters who have a bright future. Their length is hugely impressive and I want to see how they play in this format which encourages attacking golf over the Peter Harradine-designed layout.
I was chatting with a couple of players about last week, and they said the officials from the DP World Tour tried to protect the integrity of the course, especially for the final round with 14 of the pin positions being four yards or less from the edge of the greens, either from the left or right.
This week, I have also been invited to have a DP World Tour TV interview about my connection with the Emirates Golf Federation (EGF) over the last six years or so, since I have lived in Dubai. I will be talking about the schools for UAE nationals I have visited in Dubai as well as hosting briefings for the Arabic media as well as many other EGF Golf clinics and sponsor activations for the EGF.
I am excited with the recent announcement of the new EGF Board of Directors and look forward to offering my support, where, when and however I can.
Rafa Cabrera Bello is a 37 year old Spaniard and is a Dubai resident. He has four DP World Tour titles to his name including the 2012 Dubai Desert Classic and the Open de Espana last October in Madrid. He made his Ryder Cup debut in 2016. Cabrera Bello lies in fourth place in the DP World Tour Rankings.
