Yas Acres Golf & Country Club

Overview: Yas Acres Golf and Country Club is a nine-hole, par-36 floodlit course in the heart of Abu Dhabi's Yas Acres community. Fry/Straka designed the 3,700-yard layout across about 130 acres, using a central ridgeline, bold bunkers, a lake and a stream system to give the desert site real changes of height and direction. The course has long holes as well as shorter strategic tests, and its coastal position exposes the routing to wind from the Persian Gulf. It is a modern community course with enough variety to support a serious repeat round.

History: Aldar Properties developed Yas Acres as a large residential and leisure community on Yas Island, and the golf course opened for play in 2021. Construction of the first nine holes began before the opening, with Fry/Straka working through pandemic-era travel restrictions by relying heavily on detailed construction documents and an on-site shaping team. The finished course complements Yas Links nearby while serving the growing Yas Acres community with a full nine-hole experience, practice areas and a country-club setting.

Did You Know? The entire Yas Island site was originally a sandy peninsula before a man-made saltwater channel separated it from the mainland. Fry/Straka raised the Yas Acres golf property and built a ridgeline through the site, reaching roughly 30 feet in places. That landform is the organising feature of the course: tees, fairways and greens repeatedly interact with it instead of lying on a flat desert plane.