The Majlis at Emirates Golf Club: Still One of My Favorite Courses in the World
- Gunnar Kobin
- Apr 22
- 6 min read
I've played the Majlis a handful of times now and every time I leave the clubhouse I think the same thing, which is that this has to be one of the best golf experiences on the planet. Not the best golf course. I'll be honest about that. There are courses I've played that are better designed, better conditioned, better sited. But the Majlis isn't really about any of those things on their own. The Majlis is about the feeling of standing in the middle of Dubai, in the middle of one of the most absurd cities on earth, and playing a proper round of golf with the Burj Khalifa peeking over your shoulder. It's unbelievable every single time.
Majlis is a desert miracle
The Majlis opened in 1988. It was the first grass golf course built anywhere in the Middle East. Before it existed, golf here meant sand greens and oiled fairways. The land was donated by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Karl Litten did the design, and the course has been hosting the Dubai Desert Classic since 1989. Tiger's won here. Ernie Els shot 61 here in 1994 and the course record has never been beaten. McIlroy has four wins. The roll call of names who've walked these fairways is basically the history of European golf over the last four decades.
All of that matters when you're standing on the first tee. You feel it.
Playing in the middle of Dubai
This is the thing nobody properly captures in the glossy photos. The Majlis was built in what was then empty desert on the edge of a quiet port town. Thirty-something years later the city has swallowed it. Dubai Marina is on one side, the Media City towers are on another, the skyline fills the horizon. You can see the Burj Khalifa from certain spots on the course. And yet when you're out there playing, the city doesn't feel like it's intruding. It feels like you're playing inside the postcard.
That sounds like a marketing line. I don't mean it as one. It's just what the experience is actually like. The air has that particular Dubai smell of jasmine and jet fuel, you hear the distant hum of the city, and every few holes you turn a corner and get a skyline view that makes you stop and take a photo you'll never delete. Every time I walk off the 18th green I want to book another round.
What Litten built
The fairways are narrow. Not brutally narrow, but tight enough that you have to be picking lines off the tee rather than just hammering driver and hoping. Litten kept the original desert flora in play around the edges, so missing the fairway doesn't just cost you a stroke, it often costs you the ball. There's a particular Dubai scrub that swallows golf balls without a trace.
The course plays 7,301 yards from the tips, par 72. I never play it from the tips. Nobody sensible does. From the regular tees it's plenty of golf and you have a chance to score.
Greens are fast and true. The slopes are subtle rather than dramatic, which I like. You get lots of putts that look straight and aren't, and you earn the pars you make. Bunkers are deep. Some of them are seriously deep. There's one on the back nine where your feet sit below the level of the green when you're playing out. Take your medicine.
The signature holes
The par 3 7th plays entirely over water. It's not a long hole, but a bailed or pulled shot is wet, and the green is small enough that you can't really aim anywhere safe. Just hit a normal shot and hope.
The 8th is the hardest hole on the course. An uphill dogleg par 4 with a narrow fairway and a tough approach into a green sitting right next to the actual Majlis building, the Bedouin-tent-style structure that gives the course its name. Justin Rose has this hole in his personal top nine holes in the world. I don't argue with Justin Rose.
The 13th is a classic risk-reward par 5. Lake right, bunker front, a narrow entry to the green. If you're playing well you can reach in two. If you're not, you lay up, hit a wedge, and try not to make a mess of it.
The 18th
This is the hole. Par 5, doglegs ninety degrees left, water all the way down the left and wrapping around in front of a green set against the clubhouse. If you've watched any of the Desert Classic on TV, you know what this looks like. There's a plaque in the fairway marking where Colin Montgomerie hit driver from the fairway in 1996 to set up the eagle that won him the tournament. It's the best closing hole in the region and one of the best in the world. You finish with the skyline in front of you and the clubhouse to your right, and whether you make par or take a seven, you walk off the green happy.
The people you play with
Every course gives you playing partners. The Majlis, because it's a premium resort course that books a lot of singles and pairs, gives you a real mix. Two stories stand out.
The bad one first. I got paired once with a British guy and his Russian wife. I knew on the first tee this wasn't going to go well. You can tell. The way someone addresses the starter, the way they handle their bag, the look they give their playing partners. On the second green he started whining that someone was on his putting line and that I should stop moving. Nobody was on his line. I wasn't moving. On the third hole he asked me to step aside even though I was standing ten meters behind him and well out of his field of vision. His wife said nothing the entire round. They walked off after 18 without saying goodbye. I don't know what was happening in that marriage but I didn't envy either of them.
The good one, which came later, more than made up for it. I got paired with an elderly gentleman who had worked for years in the management company of one of the ruling families. Over four hours he gave me a history of Dubai the way nobody writes it in the guidebooks. How the course got built. Who was in the room when the land was granted. What this whole marina district looked like in 1990. Which of the towers had been built by whom and what was underneath them. The man had stories for days, and he told them in the relaxed way of someone who's walked these fairways a thousand times and has nothing to prove. I don't remember a single shot I hit that day. I remember the whole round.
Luckily there are only so many f...ers in the world. Most people you play with here are a pleasure.
Clubhouse and the rest
The clubhouse is iconic. It's shaped like a cluster of Bedouin tents and it's been a landmark in Dubai since before half of the current skyline existed. Inside, everything is what you'd expect from a club that hosts a Rolex Series event. The men's locker room has the wall of Desert Classic champions and it's worth a few minutes of your time. The restaurant is good. The pro shop will happily sell you a shirt with a logo on it.
Practice facilities are proper. Range, short game area, putting green, everything you need.
Service is polished without being suffocating. You'll be called sir a lot. You'll get your bag handled, your clubs cleaned, your cart loaded. The Emirates team has been doing this a long time and they do it well.
The money
It isn't cheap. Peak season green fees are premium and they've gone up every year I've played. If you're doing a Dubai golf trip and you can only splurge on one round, do it here. You get the course, the clubhouse, the skyline, and the sense of playing somewhere that matters. You don't get that at most resort courses.
Book early for peak season. Desert Classic week is essentially impossible without connections. The shoulders are tight too. Book as far out as you can.
Verdict
The Majlis is one of my favorite courses in the world and it's not really close. It isn't the best designed course I've played. It isn't even the best conditioned. But something about the combination of the course, the skyline, the clubhouse, and the history makes it special in a way that's hard to explain until you've done it. Every round I've played here has ended with me wanting to book another one.
Go play it. Take the skyline photo. Hope you get paired with the right kind of stranger.
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