A Sports Mecca (Pardon the Expression) - Ed Zuckerman

Never mind that they were in the middle of a desert. The grains of sand all around them, microscopically speaking, were too round. Perfect sand traps require angular sand (so that golf balls don’t stick in trap walls but roll to the bottom); angular sand was located and ordered from Saudi Arabia, next door. Trucks were loaded, but they were turned back at the border. For reasons unclear, Saudi Arabia wanted to hold on to that sand. So the builders of the Els Club golf course at Dubai Sports City, a vast sports complex now rising in the round-sand desert, had to settle for their second-choice sand — also from Saudi Arabia, but of a type the Saudis were willing to export.

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