Organisers need to think more local

Gary Meenaghan

• Last Updated: November 20. 2009 10:43PM UAE / November 20. 2009 6:43PM GMT

At the Earth Course’s par-three 13th hole, six adoring adolescent girls clad in pink polo shirts have set up camp on the edge of the green. On the back of their pink caps, Rory McIlroy’s name is embroidered and as the 20-year-old Northern Irishman arrives at the tee-box, the sextet chatter incessantly.

At the same moment, on the 11th hole, a pair of older Asians dressed in full golfer’s attire – right down to their spiked Nike shoes – huddle together quietly as Wen-chong Liang prepares to putt for par. He holes the putt and the duo clap politely.

The situation is the same on every hole. Whether it is the large groups of golf-crazy Indians showing their support to Jeev Milkha Singh or the raucous Australians sporting Movember moustaches and cheering on Adam Scott, the Dubai World Championship has a distinctly international feel to it. Patriotism is definitely prevailing.

Organisers announced that they had welcomed more than 15,000 spectators through the gates for yesterday’s second day of action – more than double the number of fans who made the trip to Jumeirah Golf Estates on Thursday.

To draw comparison, this year’s four-day Abu Dhabi Golf Championship attracted an event record 25,000, while the 2009 Dubai Desert Classic saw 49,000 spectators visit the Emirates Golf Club between Thursday and Sunday.

DWC organisers say they are hoping for 40,000 at the Earth Course over four days, but with the season-ending event culminating with confirmation of who has won the year-long Race to Dubai, confidence is climbing that the figure can be surpassed. And so it should be.

“We are proud to see the overall excitement and family atmosphere that has been generated in the opening days and it is only going to get better as the tournament builds up to the final day on Sunday,” said Saeed Harib, the managing director of event organisers Nakheel Leisure.

But while a walk though the Village can open your ears to more languages than you can imagine, the noticeable absence is this country’s mother tongue: Arabic.

In two days of competitive golf, I have noticed just one kandoura-clad spectator in the gallery. Ahmed, a Dubai native who studied at Cambridge and Leeds universities, was following Rory McIlroy, a player he thinks “will be world No 1 within five years”. Ahmed says Emiratis love golf. But he also insists it will take time before the locals flock to events such as the DWC in the same way they do horse racing’s Dubai World Cup or Formula One’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

If the crowds can be an indicator, it may also take an Emirati golfer to start playing on the world stage.

In fairness, a number of academies and schools are being built in a bid to develop talent at grassroots level in the UAE.

Khalid Yousef, the Emirates’ leading golfer, lined up alongside Sergio Garcia, Darren Clarke, Justin Rose and Robert Karlsson at a preview of the then-unfinished Earth Course last year and the 20-year-old coped admirably with the global attention.

Gary Player said earlier this week that Tiger Woods should have been given an exemption to play in this weekend’s event because it would provide the inaugural tournament “10 times the coverage”.

If organisers want more Emirati interest and more coverage of events in the Arabic press, it does not take somebody with the business acumen of Gary Player to realise that a wild-card invite for a golfer from the Emirates might have just such an effect.

gmeenaghan@thenational.ae