Fans can still sprint to seats at 16th hole at WM Phoenix Open but expect a true 'zero tolerance' policy in 2025 for unruly behavior

12/05/2024 07:00 AM

PHOENIX — Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, hosted a 2025 WM Phoenix Open luncheon Wednesday. The guest speaker was Nick Saban, who played in the pro-am ahead of the 2024 tournament back in February.

TPC Scottsdale made such an impression on the seven-time national championship coach that he walked out of the merch tent with “two arms full of Phoenix Open gear that he was taking to his kids and grandkids,” according to 2025 tournament director Matt Mooney.

The 50,000-square-foot merchandise venue will be back once again in 2025 as will many other staples of this tournament. The arena around the 16th hole will be rocking and fans will flock from all over to be seen at the Greenest Show on Grass.

But after last season, with an event marred by heavy rain, slippery/muddy grass, an increase in arrests and unruly behavior towards players, some significant changes are coming.

“We always talk about bigger and better,” Mooney said.

And now? “We’ve just said ‘not bigger, just better’ this year.”

‘Outlier individuals who want to have their viral moment’

Social media captured many of the issues from the 2024 event that left a negative impression. Two in particular became viral moments involving Zach Johnson and Billy Horschel. In each, fans armed with cell phones captured the two golfers reacting after provoking them during the course of play.

“We did have conversations with those guys, and frankly a lot of 1-on-1 conversations with many of the players individually,” Mooney said. He and Thunderbirds executive director Chance Cosby “were on a plane to Riviera 36 hours after the tournament ended last year” to meet with players at the Genesis Invitational.

“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. 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. Unfortunately, there's a small segment of our society that wants to create these viral moments and it’s to the detriment of the event, the detriment of the other fans and most importantly the athletes themselves.

“We always have a heavy PD [police department] presence, they’re going to be very visible this year, and if fans cross that line they will get removed from the golf tournament.”

New entrance near 18th tee, new ticketing system

To relieve a major bottleneck on the course, organizers announced a new entrance near the 18th tee box. The main entrance remains the same and fans taking that route will enter the course near the 18th green but this second point of entry will help relieve pressure in the high-traffic areas.

“That’s been discussed for many years and this was just a great year for us to make that change,” Mooney said.

A new digital ticketing system and the elimination of the “good any day” passes will streamline things as well. Having day-specific tickets “allows us to control our crowd exactly to the number each day and then by going digital we know where we’re going to be a lot more efficient at our entrance but also have better data about our end users and more accountability with each end user.”

Footrace to 16th hole is still on

General admission seats are a premium, especially on Saturday, at the 16th hole and over time that has led to the pre-dawn footrace from the main entrance to the arena at 16.

“An iconic Phoenix Open moment,” Mooney called it, who made assurances it’s not going anywhere, especially after recalling what he saw last time around. “Of all of the kind of testaments to people’s commitment to this event, I was out there at 5:30 in the morning. It’s 38 degrees. It’s pouring rain and we had 5 or 6,000 fans lined up, a lot of whom had been there all night and so you know we think that’s an incredible moment.”

Before the sun was even up, fans made a mad dash to get a good spot at the 16th Hole at the Waste Management Phoenix Open on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/Eud55ZASZc

— 12 News (@12News) February 1, 2020

The new entrance “will open most days a little bit after the main entrance, call it 30 minutes, and so yeah that kind of pre-staging in the pre-dawn hours will happen at the main entrance,” he said.

Players still love coming to TPC Scottsdale

After countless chats with Tour players about 2024, “the thing that we came away with was how much they all love this event,” Mooney said. “We were honestly surprised how little they had in terms of recommendations for tweaks to the event. They love the event but the feedback was overwhelmingly, you know, don’t don’t tweak it or make corrections that change the fabric of what makes it the most unique week on the PGA Tour.

“We want to find the right tweaks but there’s a reason this has been the five-time tournament of the year in the last decade and is the biggest event on the PGA Tour and so we’re being really mindful not to change that fabric.”