Kyle Phillips Golf Course Design

Emirates Airline has been unveiled as the Title Partner of The Invitational Hosted by Abdullah Al Naboodah to be played at Yas Links Golf Club, Abu Dhabi, on Monday, January 17. This is the fifth running of the event, after two years at the Four Seasons Golf Club, Dubai and two years at Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club. The one-day tournament is universally recognised as one of the most popular and prestigious Pro-Ams in golf and with Emirates Airline taking up the title partnership the event has taken off as a world-class golf tournament.

The event is played in a better-ball format and among the 52 European Tour Professionals taking part – one Tour Pro per pair – there are 41 European Tour Champions, 11 Ryder Cup players, three Major Champions and the World No.1. This year the Emirates Airline Invitational, will be the curtain-raiser for the four-tournament European Tour Middle East Swing.

Abdullah Al Naboodah is delighted at Emirates’ support, saying: “Emirates Airline’s Title Partnership is great news for The Invitational. “We have been successful in building a base of select international brands as Premier Partners and Partners over the past few years but to go into our fifth year with the addition of Emirates Airline as Title Partner is a huge step forward. “The Emirates Airline Invitational will benefit the Pro-Am, and particularly the charities that we – and the Professional Tour players – support. It really does take the Pro-Am to a new level and establishes the event as a world-class golf tournament.”
Read More…

Adam Lawrence reckons Kyle Phillips may have built the Gulf’s first great course.

Golf in the Middle East is an odd beast. Maybe it’s inevitable; after all, a desert environment in which temperatures often rise about 50 Celsius is hardly an obvious location for a game that grew up on the cool and damp coast of Scotland.

But it’s not just the incongruity of playing in the desert that makes Gulf golf peculiar. Nowhere else in the world does the game feel quite so much like a trophy asset, built to elevate the status of a destination rather than necessarily as a place for golfers to play the game they love.

The rapid development of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Oman et al, accelerated by the wealth provided by oil and the fear of what will happen when it runs out, has brought golf to the region. But it has been a particular type of golf – almost exclusively based around the sale of housing, with the compromises to the golf courses that invariably follow that model around the world. Only a couple of courses have been built without integrated real estate, and one of those – Emirates Golf Club, the region’s first showpiece – is now having housing retro-fitted.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the golf and real estate model, even though it has taken a big hit in the last two years. But very few golfers, presented with two otherwise equal courses, one of which runs through a housing development, and the other of which is core, would pick the housing course as their favourite. The needs of golf and housing are not the same, however hard the masterplanner tries to balance them, and it’s inevitable that he who pays the piper – in other words, the real estate buyers – should call the tune.
Read More…

Ever since it opened for play earlier this year, the Yas Links Abu Dhabi has been bestowed by superlatives.

From “stunning” to a “desert miracle” to “the best golf course in the Middle East”, accolades have poured in thick and fast for this Kyle Phillips design.

Sport 360°’s deputy editor Joy Chakravarty caught up with the celebrated designer, and talks to him on Yas Links, and various aspects of his business and philosophy.

Kyle, almost one year now since the Yas Links opened. The reception among members and players has been fantastic. What are your thoughts now?

That’s right. We had the front nine ready last year and the back nine was completed this year in March. I don’t think you can notice the difference between the conditions now.

Mike (Course Superintendent Michael Clark) has done a great job in integrating the two nines. And as I hear the feedback from the members, I am very proud of what we have created here.

Yas Links is something unique, certainly in a place like the UAE.
Read More…

GCA visited Yas Links, Kyle Phllips’s recently opened course in Abu Dhabi today, and found what must surely be considered the Middle East’s best golf course.

Located right next to Abu Dhabi’s new Formula 1 racing circuit, on the enormous Yas Island development being created by the state-owned company Aldar, Phillips’s course breaks the Gulf mode. It’s a total core golf experience: there is no real estate on the interior of the course, and, rather than the waterfront space being saved for property, there are golf holes all the way down the 3km coastline.

In fact, Phillips did more that just design the course – he designed the coast as well! Yas’s waterfront is built up using fill dredged from the sea, and part of Phillips’s task was arranging for that fill to be placed in such a way as to enable him to create exciting waterfront holes – which he has certainly done, with the par three thirteenth and seventeenth both being among the most photogenic golfers will see anywhere in the world. Phillips’s staff shaper Dave Smith has done a wonderful job in replicating the contours of a true links course; the challenge will be for greenkeeper Mike Clarke to get the Platinum paspalum grass, supplied by Jennings Turf International running quickly enough to make the contours stand out.

Adam Lawrence
Golf Course Architecture
15 September 2010

With the opening last month of Yas Links, Abu Dhabi’s latest new golf course, traditional links-style golf has arrived in the United Arab Emirates, according to course designer Kyle Phillips.

“What makes Yas Links so intriguing is how traditional it is, because nothing like it has ever been attempted before in the UAE,” said Phillips. “There are a lot of very good courses in the UAE but up until now there hasn’t been anything that would feature on a golf connoisseur’s must play list.”

Phillips has made a dozen trips to the site since February 2007, overseeing the construction details. Presented with a flat desert wasteland devoid of vegetation, Phillips created a dunescape which he reckons evokes a Scottish links flavour. “It was a tough challenge and we had to work out where we could find the material to build the landforms necessary to create a true, traditional-style links course. We also had to take great care in preserving the ecology and every aspect of the course design took this into account,” he said. “Any good golf course has to have a big finish, and I believe the three closing holes at Yas Links are three of the best closing holes of any course in the world I know.”

Yas Links is situated on Yas Island, a major sport and entertainment development created by local firm Aldar, 15 minutes from Abu Dhabi’s city centre. The course measures 7,394 yards from the back tees. Eight holes hug the coastline and 109 bunkers to negotiate along with shifting winds. Five of the last six holes play along the sea. Paspalum grass on all the playable areas should allow for firm and fast surfaces all year round.

Golf Course Architecture
July 9, 2010