The 2020 Commercial Bank Qatar Masters will be held at the Education City Golf Club instead of the venue that has been its home for the past two decades – the Doha Golf Club.

The Qatar Masters is held during March every year as part of the European PGA Tour.

Fahad Al Naimi, General Secretary of the Qatar Golf Association (QGA), explained the reason behind the move.

“The Doha Golf Club is about 23 years old now. Any golf course needs to be shut down for maintenance after about five or six years for a period of five or six months. The Doha Golf Club has never been closed for maintenance and we’re going to do that this time. And since we’ve a new course opened inside the Education City (Qatar Foundation), we’ve decided to shift the 2020 Qatar Masters there.”

Mike Shoueiry, QGA’s Technical Expert, said the Education City Golf Club had received the green signal from the European Tour.

“We had the European Tour production team visiting the Education City Golf Club in June. They made an assessment of the greens and other facilities, including for advertising and media. The venue passed the test and it’s truly a wonderful course,” said Mike.

The Education City Golf Club had a soft opening earlier this year and the course has been in use since then. Next year’s Qatar Masters will mark its official opening.

The course has been designed by Spaniard Jose Maria Olazabal, a two-time winner of the US Masters. Olazabal has played at the Qatar Masters, but never won the title.

The club has an 18-hole championship course besides two mini courses – one 9-hole and another six-hole.

The length of the par-72 championship course is 7306 yards, with the longest hole (par-5, sixth) measuring 593 yards.