DUBAI // Nick Tarratt, one of the most experienced administrators in the golfing world, has been appointed as the director of the European Tour International Office in Dubai in preparation for next year's US$10 million (Dh36.73m) order of merit play-off. The "Race to Dubai", as the new conclusion to the European tour season has been named, will be decided over the Greg Norman-designed Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates from Nov 19-22 2009. Tarratt, a 49-year-old Englishman, will be responsible for its smooth inauguration.
Next year will be the first of an initial five-year running of the Dubai World Championship and Tarratt is delighted to be at the sharp end of the organisation of such a prestigious event. He said: "I am very excited with this new role. "To be involved in pioneer projects such as these as well as helping establish the European Tour International Office will be an enjoyable challenge. I have lived in Dubai for more than a third of my life and look forward to working with our partners in the UAE and in the region as a whole."
Tarratt has been involved in top quality golf administration for 25 years and became well known to the leading professionals through his staging of the Dubai Desert Classic in the 1990s. He first arrived in the UAE in 1990 to work at the Emirates Golf Club before setting up the Dubai Golf and Racing Club, home to the Dubai World Cup - the world's richest horse race. He joined the Professional Golfers' Association at the Belfry in 1983 and was involved in the staging of the Ryder Cup at that course in 1985 as well as several other PGA and European Tour events before becoming involved in the running of the Bell's Scottish Open at Gleneagles in the late 1980s.
In 1996 he was appointed general manager of the UAE Golf Association where his responsibilities included overseeing the running of the Desert Classic which has become one of the main events on the European calendar and has twice been won by the world's top golfer Tiger Woods. Tarratt went on a two-year sabbatical to Egypt in 2002 before returning to the Emirates to take up a role as golf advisor for Emaar Properties.
Keith Waters, the director of International Policy for The European Tour, said: "We are delighted to welcome Nick Tarratt as director of our international office. He has vast experience in the world of golf as well as intimate knowledge of Dubai and the workings of the UAE and is unquestionably the ideal person to head up this new and exciting chapter in the history of the European Tour." Tarratt's new office, on a site of four championship courses which are at various stages of development, will also house the European Tour Performance Institute, providing a base for tour players to practise and train at any time of year as well as a state-of-the-art fitness and physiotherapy service.
wjohnson@thenational.ae