Emirates Golf Club - Faldo Course

Overview: The Faldo Course at Emirates Golf Club is an 18-hole, par-72 desert layout that grew from the original Wadi Course in Dubai. Sir Nick Faldo and Faldo Design remodelled the course around its natural dry river bed, using waste areas, large bunkers, raised greens and changing wind angles to create a strategic contrast with the club's Majlis Course. Dubai Golf's current course listing gives the Faldo Course 7,052 yards. The course's desert character is deliberately rugged, with uneven ground and sandy margins replacing the softer parkland look of many resort layouts.

History: Emirates Golf Club's second championship routing dates to 1996, when it was known as The Wadi. Faldo Design undertook a full remodel and the course was relaunched under the Faldo name in 2006, retaining the wadi as its central natural feature while adding more strategic depth. The work also introduced drought-tolerant grass and reduced water use, an important part of maintaining a championship course in Dubai's desert environment. The layout now operates alongside the Majlis as one of the club's two principal 18-hole courses.

Did You Know? The Faldo Course is Dubai's only full 18-hole course designed for night golf, with floodlighting extending play into the evening. Its most important design feature is not a planted lake or an artificial mound, but the dry river bed that runs across the site. Faldo used that existing landform to create uneven lies, waste areas and changes in strategy, turning a natural desert depression into the course's main architectural idea.