Yet Other Middle East Neighbors Have Fared Worse
JOHN HOPKINS
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES | What
you need to know about Dubai, a speck of
a place in the Middle East where the Tom
Cruise film Mission: Impossible – Ghost
Protocol opened last week, is that most of
the world’s cranes used to be at work here.
Once, if you raised your eyes from lining
up a putt on one of its eight golf courses
or from marvelling at the skyscrapers
thrusting into the azure sky that make it
resemble Manhattan, you could look in any
direction and see cranes. You could hear
them, too, clanking, creaking, squeaking
and screeching as they went about their
noisy business.
“In Dubai ... the people must always
come first. We must get the education,
universities, hospitals, housing right.”
– Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum
well as vice-president and prime minister
of the UAE, said. “In Dubai, we must serve
our people. The people must always come
first. We must get the education, universi-
ties, hospitals, housing right.”
Not a little defensively, he pointed out
that even in the economic crisis, some
things were done in Dubai. “The metro
was completed. The Meydan (a magnifi-
cent racetrack that is unquestionably the
world’s most luxurious) was completed. So
not all the projects stopped.”
There is turmoil in other parts of the
Middle East, where the Orient meets the
occident, but here, in Dubai, there is now
an air of cautious optimism even though
moving to Sun City in South Africa or even
Abu Dhabi, a few miles down the road, has
receded. To their credit, the players, often
accused of being self-serving and greedy,
have shown themselves aware and un-
derstanding of the economic difficulties.
“Golf’s been very lucky that the money has
not dropped significantly,” Lee Westwood
said. “We’ve lost a few tournaments but
I think we have been fortunate to hang
on to the ones we’ve got. We are all in a
fortunate position because we earn a lot of
money. In fact, it is an amazing amount of
money for doing what you enjoy.”
In 1989, the Dubai Desert Classic,
named after the sponsor, Dubai Alumin-
ium, was the first European Tour tourna-
ment to be held in this part of the world. It
was new. It was exciting. It was unusual.
Professionals from Britain had been used
to going to South Africa, Kenya, Zambia,
Botswana, the Ivory Coast and Nigeria for
warm-weather golf. Now, they could go to
Dubai. “There was nothing here then,” Greg
Norman, who played in some of the early
Desert Classics, said. “The Hard Rock Cafe
was the tallest building in this part of the
world. I stayed at the Jebel Ali hotel and
what was that, a three-story hotel?”
As Dubai recovers, it is possible to
see what it was and what it hopes it will
become again – a sporting playground that
offers exceptional facilities and unmatch-
able weather. It has an average daily tem-
perature of 75 degrees in January and 103
degrees in June. Either as a destination on
its own or in conjunction with some of its
rich neighbours such as Abu Dhabi, Qatar
and Bahrain, where the Volvo Golf Champi-
ons was cancelled this year because of the
Arab Spring, it represents an ideal place
to be in December and January when the
weather is bad almost everywhere else.
