The Els Club Dubai: One of My Favorite Courses Anywhere
- Gunnar Kobin
- Apr 22
- 4 min read
The first thing that hits you about The Els Club is the colour. Not the skyline, not the bunkering, not the clubhouse. The colour. You stand on the first tee and look down the fairway and what you see is this ridiculously vivid green strip of grass cutting through waste areas of pale yellow sand, and the contrast is so sharp it almost looks like a photograph that's been oversaturated by someone who doesn't understand colour theory. Except it's real. And once you see it you can't unsee it, and every subsequent hole uses the same contrast, and by the back nine you realise the whole course is basically built around this one visual idea and it works.
Ernie Els designed the place. Opened in 2008, Dubai Sports City, seven and a half thousand yards from the tips. Par 72. He called it a desert links, which is one of those marketing phrases that usually means nothing but in this case actually describes what he did. He took the links playbook, the wide rolling fairways and the pot bunkers and the firm turf, and he dropped it into the middle of the desert. The waste areas are what his team used to frame everything. They run alongside most of the fairways, they come into play on almost every hole, and they give the course its look.
I've played here a few times now and every round has reminded me why I keep coming back. The course photographs beautifully. It plays well. Conditioning is the best in Dubai, I don't think anyone argues with that. The greens are the real thing, proper speed and subtle breaks that Ernie apparently modelled on Pinehurst No. 2. The bunkering he modelled on Royal Melbourne. I don't know enough about Royal Melbourne to confirm or deny the homage but the bunkers are deep, strategic, and place where the punishment fits the crime.
Lion's Den. That's what Ernie named holes 9 through 11 when the course opened, and the name stuck. It's the stretch everybody talks about and it deserves the attention. Three back-to-back holes that ramp up the difficulty and the visual drama in a way that makes you feel like you're playing something important. The 9th in particular is a beast, a long par 4 with a steeply elevated green sitting right below the clubhouse, where a short approach is basically a guaranteed bogey and a long one can be worse. I've made a lot of 5s on that hole. I expect to keep making them.
The rest of the course has real variety. Holes 7 and 15 bring water in, which is the only place on the property where water becomes a serious factor, and both holes use it well. The par 3s are all different from each other, which sounds like a basic standard but you'd be surprised how many resort courses fail that test. The par 5s give you genuine risk-reward decisions from the tee rather than just asking you to hit three straight shots.
Now, the setting. Dubai Sports City is inland. You're not playing next to the Marina or with the Burj in view. The backdrop is residential apartment buildings belonging to the Victory Heights community that surrounds the course. Some people don't like this. I get the point. The Majlis has better views. Yas Links has the water. The Els Club has apartment towers looking over the 15th tee, which isn't going to wow anybody on Instagram.
But I actually don't mind it. Once you're inside the course, with the sand on one side and the grass on the other and the whole visual thing going on, the apartment buildings fade into just being part of the scene. The course holds its own attention. You don't need the skyline to make it work.
The clubhouse is great. Two restaurants, 261 which is named after Ernie's winning score at the 2003 Mercedes Championship (nice touch) and the Big Easy which is his South African-themed grill. The Butch Harmon and now Claude Harmon Performance academy is on site if you want to work on your game properly. There's a pool with a swim-up bar. You can stay in the holiday rooms right by the first tee, which for a serious golf trip is a proper setup.
Service is what you expect from a Troon-managed club in Dubai. Polished without being annoying. Everything works. Your clubs get cleaned, your buggy is ready, your bag finds its way back to your car. Nobody's performing hospitality at you. They just do it.
Money. It's expensive. Not Majlis expensive but not cheap either. Worth it, in my opinion, for the golf and the conditioning and the whole experience. If you're in Dubai for a golf trip and you haven't played it, you're missing one of the best courses in the region. If you have played it and you didn't love it, we probably disagree on what makes a golf course good.
That's the short version. I like it here. I'll be back. The green and yellow keep pulling me in.
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