Ayla Golf Course

Overview: Ayla Golf Course is the 18-hole championship routing at Ayla Golf Club in Aqaba, Jordan. The official club profile lists par 72 and 7,152 yards, while the course’s identity comes from the meeting of rolling turf, desert mountain horizons and a network of lagoons and wadis. Greg Norman’s design uses those water features as part of the strategy and as a framework for the landscape. Holes play in different directions and include changes in elevation, so the scorecard’s length is only one part of the test. The contrast is unusually clear: green fairways and shaped playing corridors sit beside white sand, open rock and the intense light of the Gulf of Aqaba.

History: Ayla opened in 2016 as Jordan’s first 18-hole championship golf course. The project was built from scratch as part of the Ayla Oasis development, with Greg Norman Golf Course Design applying a least-disturbance approach to the site. The club also developed a separate nine-hole, par-27 academy course, so this profile refers only to the full Championship Course. From the outset, water conservation and the use of indigenous planting were treated as design priorities rather than as later additions: reservoirs, subsurface irrigation, solar energy and treated water all support the oasis landscape.

Did You Know? Ayla’s lagoons and wadis do more than frame the fairways. The club says they were formed as groundwater-irrigation reservoirs and have also become stopping places for migrating birds. The course therefore combines a championship routing with a deliberately created wetland network in one of Jordan’s driest landscapes.