From the Fairways: Arab event a yardstick for the UAE golf

This week sees The Montgomerie, Dubai, host the 23rd Arab Golf Championship. Fourteen Arab golfing nations are competing for prestigious team and individual titles in this event.

The UAE hosts the event for the third time. Their performance will hopefully provide a genuine yardstick on progress made by the UAE National golfers. And more especially the juniors, two of whom – Faris Al Mazrui and Rashid Alabbar – will be part of the four–man UAE team.

The Championship provides an interesting contrast involving the top countries and top players.
Many of the golfers participating have competed on the wider world stage in events such as the Nomura Cup, the Eisenhower Trophy and the Dubai Desert Classic.

The Arab Golf Championship also attracts the lesser well off and other golfing nations that provide less than the 4 scratch players as some of the leading countries have on their entry lists.

The event is not just another tournament – it is an annual get together of the Arab golf administrators to discuss matters of mutual interest. The juniors in the region should be high on the agenda for discussion.

Sadly, there are countries with no junior representation or structure but a sharing of information at such events can only be beneficial.

Quality programmes targeting junior golfers have been established in many of the Arab golfing countries either exclusively for their National juniors or including ex pats.

The latter has the track record of creating a more worldly junior golfer who, by the very nature of being treated as a golfer who is a National gives him a better outlook than a junior who is viewed as a National who is a golfer – a subtle but crucial difference.

The venue is playing host to its first significant regional golf event and the feedback from those early practicers in the Championship have been more than positive.

A fair test of golf from the Sapphire tees has been set up for the 4 round event at just over 6700 yards to suit not just the stronger teams from Bahrain, Morocco, Lebanon and Egypt but from the other lesser nations.

How will the home UAE team do?

Home advantage and local pressure from supporters – all with good intentions – can sometimes distract certain players whereas others thrive on that extra attention. The two "elder statesmen" of the team Ismail Sharif and Walid Alattar have been here before and know what is expected of them.

16–year–old Faris and 15–year–old Rashid have performed impressively in the recent GCC Golf Championship in Saudi Arabia – but with respect to that five team event, this week's action is of a different level.

We wish the two boys, or should it be golfers, all the best this week. An interesting footnote is that Faris has never competed in a 4 round tournament.

This illustrates the rapid progress made by the juniors in a short time and already they seem to have crossed the line of merely playing junior events – usually off handicap and friendly tees – to adult golf off scratch played from a full course against the best golfers in the region – not always an easy transition.

Whatever happens to the UAE team and the 4 players it will be great experience that must be enjoyed - we will watch their progress with interest.

Nick Tarratt is the General Manager of the UAE Golf Association.