Dubai: The Omega Dubai Ladies Classic (ODLC) is no longer the Ladies European Tour season-ender, and both this year’s ODLC and Abu Dhabi’s Fatima Bint Mubarak Ladies Open (FBMLO) have been deferred until 2019 as part of strategic changes in local golf.
The news was broken before an official announcement could be published by both tournaments after the Ladies European Tour (LET) released their schedule for the rest of the 2018 season on their website this week.
The ODLC has taken place in early December at Emirates Golf Club since 2006, while the FBMLO has run in early November at Saadiyaat since 2016.
ODLC tournament director David Spencer confirmed to Gulf News that the ODLC would now be played in late April, and would no longer be the LET’s season-ending event, making way for Spain’s Andalucia Open this November.
“There’s a lot of reasons why,” he said. “First of all we are up against UAE National Day (December 2) and the beginning of the expat exodus which occurs each year ahead of the festive season.
“We also want to showcase to the world how long the off-season is here in Dubai, we don’t want to just say December, January, we want to be able to show that golf is played and we’re really busy here, in January, February, March, April and May.
“We’ve been planning to do this for quite a while but the issue is the LET are going through managerial changes and we have been working with a couple of different people.
“It’s always been our intention (to change dates), it’s always been a difficult date for us and the benefits of being the last tournament of the season have not been huge from a tourism dynamic or in advertising Dubai, so that’s our reasoning behind it.”
Ahmad Al Qubaisi, marketing and communications director for Abu Dhabi Sports Council, who organise the Fatima Bint Mubarak Ladies Open, said: “We will be making an announcement the week after the Ryder Cup relating to the exciting re-positioning of Abu Dhabi’s golf portfolio.”
