Wasted Spectators Phoenix Open – Nothing Will Change.

The PGA Tour heads this week to the Grand Canyon State of Arizona and what is billed as the ‘Greatest Show in Golf’ – the WM Waste Management Phoenix Open – or as so many observers now commonly refer to it as the ‘Wasted Spectators Phoenix Open”.

The TPC Scottsdale tournament is famed for the ‘Stadium’ hole, the par-3 16th, and the hole Tiger Woods aced amid wild scenes during the 1997 tournament.

There is no other par-3 hole in the world of golf like it, and where a full 16th hole Skybox package starts at $75,000 for the week of the event and includes:

  • 34 Skyboxes catering for 16 credentials per day | Tuesday – Sunday
  • 2 host credentials per day | Tuesday – Sunday
  • Complimentary breakfast and lunch buffet and open bar
  • 2 Valet parking passes | good all week
  • Free general parking with shuttle service.

Note ‘and open bar’.

Organisers must be making money as this year’s Phoenix Open boasts an $400,000 increase on the prize purse from a year ago to $9.2m.

Despite this increased purse the event will not change and an experience I found to be the most out-of-control and obnoxious of all tournaments not only on the PGA Tour but in golf.

This journalist has been most fortunate to travel the world reporting on golf and that includes twice to the Phoenix Open but I promised myself I would never to attend again. In fact, I was so disappointed with the tournament I purposely cut short my attendance after the first round. It was just everything about the tournament with its alarming, and sometimes freightning alcohol-fuelled nature.

I’d just needed to get out of TPC Scottsdale and find fresh air.

There were scenes taking place you just don’t wish to see taking place at any outdoor gathering, and here I’m not singling out the thousands of countless totally inebriated fans but ‘other’ goings on and I’m sure you know where I’m coming from.

The fans that attend the Phoenix Open are not true golf fans.  They go there to get ‘wasted’ and when they’ve had more beer than they should, they continue to down can after can, after can.

There’s hardly any kind of containment with the alcohol-fueled spectators hurling abuse at the pros, fights breaking out in the crowds so much a year ago tournament officials eventually closed the gates, denying entry even to ticketholders. Alcohol sales were also suspended leading to calls of ‘We want beer’ being chanted at some holes before the ban was lifted.

The local Scottsdale Police Department revealing that at last year’s event there was a shocking 54 arrests over six days, while 211 attendees were ejected from the event.

Those numbers were a significant increase from 18 arrests and 102 ejections in 2023, while in 2022 there were zero arrests and 90 ejections.

Good news then with zero arrests but still 90 kicked out.

In 2018, the last year official statistics were provided, attendance for the week reached a staggering 719,000, with over 200,000 attending Saturday. In 2024, weather may have kept some folks home, but the course on traditional “moving day” was still packed and with conditions and many of the grassed areas soaked with rain the day had the all the makings of an impending disaster.

Among the ‘name’ pros competing last year was 2023 USA Ryder Cup captain, Zach Johnson and the present BMW PGA champ Billy Horschell, and they were having none of it.

Johnson, as you see in the video hereunder, approached one group of fans pleading with them to ‘shut-up’ while his group were playing their shots. Though that was not the end of it as you can see Johnson’s caddy and a possible security person turn around as they were walking off down the fairway to look back at the group. Clearly, a spectator has had a second ‘go’ at Johnson.

Saturday is traditionally the wildest day at the tournament, and last year lived-up to that.

Take a look at the next two video clips from last year’s third round:

Horschel, and the current World No. 20, has been attending the Phoenxix event since his debut in 2013.  He’s not missed a Phoenix tournament since, posting best finishes of T9th in 2020 and T8th two years later.

The Florida-based Horschel and also three-time DP World Tour winner is one of the nicest guys you can meet and this was so obvious when he competed in last year’s Dunhill Links Championship at the Home of Golf, and in the week following his victory over the overwhelming crowd favourite Rory McIlroy at the BMW PGA Championship and Horschel’s second success in the Tour’s flagship event.

Horschell was being partnered in Scotland by PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, and while Monahan was being guarded about entertaining any questions concern a hopefuly mending of the bridges in the men’s pro game, Hoschell was his ever-approachable best despite missing the third round cut.

Though Horschel’s patience was clearly tested at last year’s Phoenix event, and you can’t blame him as you can also gather from seeing the video hereunder.

Billy Ho pic.twitter.com/8tjHPUhKc6

Of course, you don’t wish a player, caddy or spectator to lose their cool but having witnessed first hand what goes on at the Phoenix Open, I don’t blame Billy one bit in delivering both barrels to those he was trying to reason with.

Tournament director Matt Mooney has warned fans 2025 will be a different event.

“It’s one of the things that concerns me the most as an avid golfer is that you have these outlier individuals who want to have their viral moment and so we’re also really making an emphasis this year again on our fan code of conduct,” Mooney said.

“Our general admission fans will have to click on a code of conduct acknowledgment and we’re going to have a zero-tolerance policy for people that cross those procedures”.

Strong words from Mooney but those ‘viral moments’, as he says, will be present again at this week’s event.

One last point, and something I have never, ever witnessed before at any sporting event and that was a line of around a dozen police officers at the exit gates, undertaking random breath-testing of spectators as they left the course.

Yes, a smart move if you’ve had a few drinks and were thinking of driving home but a dozen police officers who could otherwise be engaged!  It again speaks volumes of the nonsense that goes on at the event.

Another reason I do not wish to go anywhere near the Wasted Spectators Phoenix Open.

 

 



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