Khalid Yousef, the country’s best amateur golfer led the UAE national team to a joint-57th finish last week in Japan at the biennial World Amateur Team Championship, the most prestigious amateur team event in the sport.
Familiar face
There have been 29 iterations of the event, also called the Eisenhower Trophy, and the London-born Yousef has played in six of them, starting at age 14. In his first go-around, future PGA Tour standout Ryan Moore won the individual title. “It was a bit nerve-racking, you could say, my first major tournament,” said Yousef, 24. “Basically, the top amateur won it.”
Leading the way
With an Emirati father and English mother, Yousef moved back to the UAE with his family at age eight and took up the game, quickly becoming the most-accomplished player in the region. In Japan, he again faced some of the top college-age players in the world. “Most of those guys, they’re planning to pursue professional golf as a career, but none of us [are],” said Yousef, who was joined by teammates Rashid Hamood and Sohail Al Marzouqi. “We have realistic targets here. We know we’re good at golf, but we’re not that good. You can’t just be a professional – you have to find other ways to make money and earn a living.”
UAE team’s rock
With a business degree from American University in Dubai, Yousef has a nice gig at the Emirates NBD bank, where he gets placed on paid leave whenever he is playing for the national team. Before heading to Japan for two weeks, the team spent two weeks in Australia, practising. “I basically decided to stay here to go to university so I could pursue the UAE national team golf,” he said. “If I went to the UK, it would have been tough to get time off from university. Over here, it was quite easy.”
Growing the game
The UAE beat Qatar and Bahrain in the Japan event, but the winning US team finished 77 strokes ahead of the UAE trio. It has been tough for the sport to find a foothold in the Arab world. “I think we probably have less than 100 golfers who play regularly, among UAE nationals,” Yousef said.
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