Top 10 Courses: 2018 Readers’ Choice

Your Favourites Revealed

There might be nothing more subjective in golf than the ranking of courses. Designs that captivate some golfers will leave others unmoved. The greens that you love to putt on, your playing partner might loathe; the holes that you remember, they may quickly forget. How fond a golfer is of a certain course may come down to nothing more than how well they last played it. Happy memories are easy to hold when you’ve broken your personal best score, and by the same token, even the loveliest of course will lose some of its lustre if you’ve endured a bad round.

Our ranking of the top 10 golf courses in the Middle East is the only one of its kind and an undertaking that we pride ourselves on tackling as fairly and methodically as possible.

But we have continued the tradition that we started back in 2011 of giving our readers the opportunity to have their say, too. Through an online voting form, almost 500 readers of Golf Digest Middle East listed their five favourite golf courses in order. We tallied the results, and the Readers’ Choice Top 10 is published here.

Each course received a score of 25pts for a first place pick, 18 for second, 15 for third, 12 for fourth and 10 for fifth.

Two of the top three clubs remain the same, with Abu Dhabi slipping out, the Creek sneaking in and Yas Links moving up a spot to second. The famed Majlis retains its position as the Readers’ favourite, the home of the Omega Classics matching its top-ranking as judged by our panel. Elsewhere, Doha Golf Club, Trump International Golf Club Dubai and Al Zorah Golf Club in Ajman make debuts on the list. With nine of the 10 courses here located in the UAE, its reputation as the golfing capital of the region remains unchallenged. – RG