PHOENIX — The WM Phoenix Open is intentionally messy.
It’s dubbed “The Greatest Show on Grass” and “The People’s Open” for a reason. For four days a year, professionals on the PGA Tour play for millions amongst lively and rambuctious fans, many of whom are inebriated. Twenty-thousand of them congregate in the Coliseum, which surrounds the par-3 16th hole.
That’s why the event is a bucket-list destination for golf fans near and far. You go to Augusta National for tradition and prestige. You go to TPC Scottsdale for the three-ring circus. The tournament no longer releases attendance numbers but in 2018 it set a record of 719,179 fans for the week and 216,818 on Saturday alone.
The FOMO has heightened over the past three years with hole-in-ones and shirtless stunts, sights to be seen that resulted in celebratory showers of beer. Technically, beer-throwing is against tournament rules, but the prospect of something like that happening — and you being there to witness and participate — is part of the draw. Players relish the spectacle from inside the ropes.
“It’s something we don’t see as much throughout the year, but it’s really fun to come here and experience it,” said world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, a two-time winner of the event. “It’s one of my favorite tournaments of the year.”
In 2024, however, the WM Phoenix Open lost the plot.
Anticipated and controlled chaos devolved into a public safety hazard, becoming a living nightmare and a PR firestorm for the PGA Tour and tournament leadership. Social media lit up with clips of behavior that could present as harmless fun from a distance, but in real-time at the tournament, the environment teetered on dangerous for fans and disrespectful toward the players.
The Thunderbirds — the 88-year-old charitable organization that puts on the Phoenix Open — reacted immediately, concerned about the player experience and their perception of the event. Tournament directors Matt Mooney and Chance Cozby flew to Los Angeles the morning after Nick Taylor hoisted the trophy, and the PGA Tour allowed them to meet with the player advisory council at the Genesis Invitational.
Does a percentage of those inebriated fans not care or even realize that there’s professional golf happening in the background of their desert party? Yes. That doesn’t mean the tournament can go on without a field of the best players in the world. As much as it’s the People’s Open, it’s still an Open. The road to redefining the WM started on that Monday.
“It’s about how we can make the right changes to improve the experience of the fans and players,” Mooney says, “but at the same time, not deviate too far from what is such a unique event on tour.”
The Thunderbirds have poured millions into an effort to prove the tournament doesn’t always have to cross a line. They’ve made significant course infrastructure improvements, including a new entrance to the venue, and debuted a new marketing slogan for the event: “Better, not bigger.” The dialing back of the craziest event on the PGA Tour will be put to the test this week.
The WM Phoenix Open saw zero rainfall during the 2022 and 2023 tournament weeks. In 2024, the course received .51 inches of rain — nearly a record. That was the first domino to fall.
“In 30 years, we haven’t seen anything like it,” says Dan Fox, a senior-ranking member of the Thunderbird organization who has overseen the 16th hole for decades, including greeting players on the 16th tee.
It’s called the Stadium Course because its hillsides and mounds create natural vantage points for fans around the golf course. Starting early in the week, those helpful features began to disappear, one by one. The desert venue was not designed to hold that much water. The grassy perches turned into pits of mud and parking lots flooded. A snowball effect began.
First, the Wednesday celebrity pro-am was canceled after four holes due to rain and hail. Then play on Thursday was suspended due to pooling on the greens and unplayable conditions, leaving ready partiers stranded at the golf course with nothing to do but drink. The tee-time cadence was thrown from that point on. Friday morning players arrived at the course to a 90-minute frost delay, compounding the issue. Some players didn’t play golf at all Friday, waiting for a second-round tee time on Saturday morning, when play was halted again.
Fans pour beer on themselves at the 16th hole during the 2024 WM Phoenix Open. (Ben Jared / PGA Tour via Getty)
Because of all the delays and suspensions, there was a two-hour gap between the conclusion of the second round Saturday and the beginning of the third round. Fans were already antsy. On Saturday, that turned into frustration and restlessness. Couple that with the mud — spectators physically could not stand in the areas where they typically congregate. The concrete cart paths, which typically help people move throughout the property on foot, were filled with fans going nowhere. The area just outside the entrance to the tournament, located behind the 18th green, became a bottle-necked standstill as throngs of fans seeking to use their “good any day” tickets arrived after staying away earlier in the week.
On the nearby muddy hillsides, intoxicated fans slipped, both intentionally and unintentionally. A fan had already been seriously injured after falling from the first story of the stadium on Friday. From a safety perspective, things got ugly, quickly.
Before it could have the chance to get worse, the Scottsdale Police Department decided to shut down tournament gates at 2:00 p.m Saturday. They also suspended concessions. No one could buy alcohol on the TPC Scottsdale grounds from that point onward.
“It sounds like an excuse, but the reality is the course had never been in that condition,” Mooney says. “We’ve had bad weather, but there were some things that we had to react to that we’d just not seen before.”
Earlier in the day, several fans reported entering the tournament grounds without even scanning their tickets — that’s how chaotic the entrance became. After Scottsdale PD made their call to shut it down, fans with Saturday tickets were turned away. Players even had trouble entering the gates, including Jordan Spieth.
The closure was intended to encourage fans to exit the property and relieve the overcrowding, but around the stadium and other packed sections of the golf course, it only created more unrest.
Some attendees reported beers being resold for 10 times their original price. The 16th hole erupted with chants: “We want beer!” It took certain groups upwards of an hour to even reach the exit on foot.
Sunny skies emerged on Sunday, but the mud remained and a new issue arose: Videos of two particular altercations between players and fans surfaced and went viral. The 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, Zach Johnson, was seen storming over to a group of spectators, telling them, “Don’t Sir me.” Another video circulated of Billy Horschel, who came to the defense of his playing partner on Sunday when a fan deliberately yelled during his backswing.
“Shut the hell up, man. He’s trying to hit a damn golf shot here — it’s our f—ing job!” Horschel said.
Johnson told the Arizona Republic following the round: “This tournament has been inappropriate and crossed the line since I’ve been on tour, and this is my 21st year.
“It’s to the point where now, how do you reel it in? Because it’s taken on a life of its own. I think the Thunderbirds probably need to do something about it. I’m assuming they’re ashamed.”
The tournament had clearly experienced an unfortunate series of events, but how could it explain such unruly fan behavior? Scottsdale PD did not make an arrest in 2022 but 54 last year, and trespassing, ejections and calls for service have also gone up year-over-year.
It puts the Thunderbirds in a tough spot — every tournament outside of the major needs an identity to generate local and national interest, and to say they have succeeded at that is an understatement. Those efforts have a direct effect on their charitable giving — a record $17.5 million last year to Phoenix-area causes.
Hundreds of thousands of fans overwhelmed the Stadium Course last year. (Jordan Rondone / USA Today Sports Images)
There were well-founded concerns that players could avoid the tour stop after last year, and while that has not necessarily materialized — seven of the top 20 players in the world are in it, including Scheffler and Horschel — a repeat of last year’s debacle could always change that for future editions.
“It’s the old adage that you can’t let a couple bad apples spoil the whole bunch,” Mooney says. “When we went back and talked to all the Thunderbirds, our partners, vendors, it’s a few people. Unfortunately, that’s become the nature of sports. At the Players Championship, Rickie Fowler had somebody yelling in his backswing. You know, it’s sad that we live in a world where people just want to draw attention to themselves. They want to get on TV or have their buddy hear them yell. We want to control everything we can, but we recognize that there’s going to be a few people that we just have to have a zero tolerance policy.”
The feeling is that the tournament energy had been building since it reopened to fans after the pandemic forced the PGA Tour to limit attendance in 2021. The social media content bubble didn’t help curtail expectations for newer attendees after that — they saw the 2022 highlight reel, including tour pros Harry Higgs and Joel Dahmen lifting their shirts for an adoring crowd on No. 16, and it’s what they came to the tournament to be a part of.
The Thunderbirds say they’re ready to put their foot down. They won’t stand for unruly behavior when they see it this year. But can their plan actually make a noticeable impact?
A number of changes have been implemented for the 2025 tournament. The Thunderbird organization cut into its reserves and spent tens of millions of dollars making improvements to the venue in anticipation of a “Better, not bigger” WM Phoenix Open. Namely:
• An additional entrance to increase flow in and out of the tournament.
• No “any day” ticketing. Spectators will have to buy tickets for specific days, and the tickets will be digital.
• Increased ticket prices. The Thunderbirds hope this will address their unprecedented demand.
• Wider concrete cart path areas. These renovations are intended to prevent last year’s bottle-necking issue.
• Relocation of food and alcohol sales to less concentrated areas around the course.
• New fan congregation zones for spectating, particularly a large, flat viewing area near the 12th hole.
• 1100 feet of new player bridges, to protect the golfers as they walk from hole to hole.
A fan is detained after running onto the 11th fairway during the 2024 WM Phoenix Open. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
There was even discussion around creating another stadium hole, perhaps on the front nine, to disperse fans throughout the property. The Thunderbirds say the 2024 event gave them an excuse to look into changes that have been top of mind for many years.
“The initial response is, there’s no way it’s going to be worse than it was last year,” says Charley Hoffman, a WM-sponsored golfer who has been playing in the event for 20 years. “I think they listened to us, and listened to the PGA Tour, definitely trying to make a change for the better.”
When a situation arises on No. 16 during the tournament, a police officer will frequently look to Fox and ask if the fan should be gone for the week or banished from TPC Scottsdale for life. “We have a lot of police presence already with the key groups, but we’re expanding to more Thunderbirds with those key groups. Really, PD looks to us,” Mooney says.
Those calls — and their ability to rein in an audience they’ve spent decades cultivating — have never been more important.
(Top photo: Joe Rondone / USA Today Sports Images)
