This is the putting green outside the clubhouse of the Emirates Golf Course in Dubai, where I was working last week covering the 25th Dubai Desert Classic championship. The distinctive bedouin tent-style buildings look great against the new modern architecture.
As it was the 25th anniversary there was a lot of looking back and reflection of the previous quarter of a century and how the event has changed from very humble beginnings to a major event in the golfing calendar.
What is remarkable is the change that Dubai has seen over these 25 years. The first event was when there was literally nothing else around the course for a few miles back to the small town of Dubai and the airport. The bedouin-style clubhouse was the tallest structure around for miles in the beginning.
Three of my colleagues were there the first year, and have done each year since and they remember driving from the airport through the desert with no other buildings before you reached the course. As the many video clips showed it was just the rectangular patch of green land, surrounded by sand.
Go there now there and you will see the skyline as shown in the picture, with the Dubai Marina area having grown into a vast and continually expanding place. I went up to the 51st floor of one of the towers you can see in the background to see some colleagues staying in an apartment, and you really get an idea of how big that whole area is. The skyline continues way past the edge of frame to the left and is great to look at. Astonishing given how quickly it has grown from the sand!
It doesn't even look real. Looks a scale model.. Gosh! Impressive! I really like the way you capture the first plane and the buildings in the background so we can see the scale.
