Tiger Woods in Dubai Update

Just in case you DIDN'T think this was going to happen, I wanted to alert you that El Tigre has decided to tee it up in the Dubai Desert Classic again. And why wouldn't he? He gets treated like a king over there. He is paid an enormous appearance fee. He probably will win the tournament. And, oh yeah, he's getting paid somewhere in the order of $25 million to develop Al Ruwaya there.

It is a slow news day, so I started looking around for some more information on the development. Lo and behold at the link, you can find out information about the golf course and there are finally some drawings of the 3 holes that have been designed...on paper.

Here's the 12th hole, a 181 yard par 3:



The supposedly drivable 341 yard, par 4 17th:


And the massive, 507 yard 18th hole:


Based upon the information we were given in the initial press release about these designs, the pictures look a lot different than what I was expecting. Initially, I thought the 18th sounded a lot like the last at Quail Hollow. Now I'm starting to think this a lot more like the 18th at Glen Abbey in Canada. #17 strikes me as coming out of Sawgrass' playbook, particularly like #12 there. Now I'm not so sure what to think of Woods' 12th in terms of inspirations. But, needless to say that the pictures are a lot different than the initial propaganda and misinformation given.