“Midway between camp and the seashore lies a barren blazing waste, distinguished from other barren blazing wastes by a faint hint of soil caught in a great depression among the brown mushroom hills and sheltered there from the claws of the shemaal…The terms ‘fairway’ and ‘rough’ imply a distinction that is theoretical only. Fairways lie between two rows of stakes but possess nearly the same number of rocky outcrops, sand dunes and gravel banks as the rough. ” 

–Philip McConnell, Arabia American Oil Company (Aramco) Chief Petroleum Engineer, describing one of the earliest ‘golf courses’ in Saudi Arabia in 1942. Writing for Golf Course Architecture, Toby Ingleton provides a fascinating history of the growth of golf in the Kingdom. [Golf Course Architecture]