Yas Links Abu Dhabi, home of the HSBC Abu Dhabi Championship, won a Gold Medal and a Silver Medal at the 2022 Asian Golf Awards. The two categories in which the awards were won included: Best Golf Course in the Middle East and Africa (Gold) and Best Championship Course in the Middle East and Africa (Silver).
Yas Links Abu Dhabi, results
As the first links-style course in the Middle East, Yas Links Abu Dhabi is renowned for its quality of design due to Kyle Phillips and has been recognized worldwide thanks to its 34th place in Golf Digest’s ranking of the 100 best courses in the world.
. The course’s signature finishing holes 16, 17 and 18 are considered one of the toughest trios in the emirates. Yas Island is one of the larger natural islands in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, after the main island. It is 7.7 km long from north to south and a maximum of 6.2 km wide, and has an area of 25 km².
Yas is located in the mangrove belt to the east of the main island, to the south on the mainland is the coastal area of Al Raha, which is developed for tourism, and Abu Dhabi Airport is around 7 km to the south-east .
The flat sand island is being developed and fundamentally changed with a $40 billion development project by Aldar Properties. For this purpose, the coastlines were straightened, filled in as new areas, bordered by a navigable canal 90 to 140 m wide and thus made accessible from the sea.
Bridges and roads were built on the island area and accompanying forest belts were laid out to prevent erosion. The area of the original island was thus increased by about a third to around 25 square kilometers. In order to preserve a natural character, areas for the resettlement of the lost mangrove vegetation were also planned.
The project includes a wide range of residential complexes with villas, detached houses and apartment buildings, around 20 hotels, a leisure complex with three theme parks as well as sports and harbor facilities. There is also a motorsport race track (Yas Marina Circuit), which was opened in November 2009 with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix of the Formula 1 series with a day-night race.
The island of Yas will be thematically dedicated primarily to motorsport and its hobby and leisure variants: North of the F1 race track, a sponsored theme park “Ferrari World” was built, whose octopus-like foil roof spans around 200,000 square meters.
Another theme park (Warner Bros.) and an aqua park (Yas Waterworld) have already been completed. There are also numerous providers of motorized amusements such as dune, go-kart and off-road driving. There will be other leisure facilities, eg
give a golf course with six hotels, plus several developed beach sections. A 400,000 square meter shopping center with a futuristic architecture will serve to supply the permanent residents and the many planned day visitors.
In July 2009, around 41,000 workers were working in shifts on the numerous construction projects on Yas Island. A container camp with the dimensions of a small town was set up for the construction workers. The Shahama-Saadiyat Freeway runs across Yas Island, which since October 2009 has connected the center of Abu Dhabi via Saadiyat Island with the extended Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai. In January 2021, the 18,000-seat multipurpose Etihad Arena opened on the island’s southern waterfront.