Imago
AP Photo/Denis Poroy, file
Imago
AP Photo/Denis Poroy, file
The Phoenix Open doesn’t apologize for being loud. It charges $150,000 per skybox for the privilege. Pierceson Coody found that out Thursday morning on the par-3 16th when his wedge missed the green, and the boos arrived immediately. It was his first time experiencing this, and his reaction wasn’t outrage but rather acceptance.
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“It’s really cool. It’s hard for it not to feel like just a little bit more than some other events,” Coody told the media. “Hit a really bad wedge on 16 and missed the green, so I got booed my first time there. It was still fun.”
Matt Fitzpatrick operated from the same playbook. When asked whether early tee times offer refuge from fan intensity before the crowd gets “too lost in the sauce,” he dismissed the premise entirely.
“No. I don’t think there is any advantage there,” Fitzpatrick said. “Realistically, it’s two or three holes that you might get a bit of abuse on, but it’s all good fun. I love this week. I think it’s my fifth time, so I’m always happy to be here.”
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Five appearances at this event have taught Fitzpatrick that resistance is futile. Chris Gotterup went further, turning acceptance into performance. After making a birdie on 16, he tossed his ball into the stands and leaned fully into the theater.
“Yeah, it’s impossible not to,” Gotterup said when asked about embracing the atmosphere. “Even if you hate it, you have to embrace it. They’re on top of you. There is no way to escape it, so there is only, you know, you have to embrace it. It’s a cool atmosphere. It’s something we get once a year. To make a birdie on that hole to get the crowd going, we had a couple in our group, so it was a lot of fun.”
Joel Dahmen tested the boundaries differently—his shot fell off the green, the boos rained down, then he put on a Seattle Seahawks helmet, and the boos intensified. He chipped in from 45 feet for a birdie, threw hats into the crowd, and turned the hostility into celebration within 90 seconds.
Joel Dahmen 🤝 The People’s Open pic.twitter.com/We14nUZsdg
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 5, 2026
Nicolai Højgaard played his Thursday round in relative morning calm, but his comments pointed toward what’s coming. “I would say it was a little quiet morning, but the vibe and the atmosphere here are great,” Højgaard said. “We don’t have that any other week, basically, so it’s such a special week with the fans. And 16, even in the morning when we were there, was great. I can’t wait for tomorrow afternoon.”
The crowd isn’t something to endure—it’s the reason this stop matters. This acceptance didn’t emerge by accident; it’s the engineered outcome of a financial model that transformed golf’s quietest convention into its loudest revenue stream. The 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale holds up to 20,000 fans in a fully enclosed stadium structure. Skybox pricing runs $150,000 per week, with single-day access ranging from $700 to $2,300 depending on location and suite size. Since 2010, the tournament has raised $230 million for charity while pumping over $400 million annually into the Arizona economy.
The catalyst arrived in 1997 when Tiger Woods stood over a tee shot on that same par-3 and made a hole-in-one. At the time, the hole featured five small skyboxes and a natural hillside that created an amphitheater effect. The roar that followed—21-year-old Tiger, two months before his first green jacket—convinced tournament organizers that silence was leaving money on the table.
How “The Loudest Party in Golf” became official policy
By 2009, the 16th became fully enclosed. The tournament had drawn 577,000 spectators in 2018 before organizers stopped releasing attendance figures. The PGA Tour named it “Tournament of the Year” four times between 2014 and 2019, explicitly citing the fan experience. The official “People’s Open” branding arrived in 2021.
But the diplomatic player’s language from Thursday doesn’t match private reality. Byeong Hun An called this tournament a “s–tshow” in 2024 after things got “totally out of control.” Zach Johnson snapped, “I’m just sick of it. Just shut up,” after Ryder Cup taunts. Billy Horschel yelled, “It’s our f—ing job,” defending his playing partner from backswing hecklers.
Sixty-three arrests in 2024. Three hundred nineteen ejections. An on-site jail and medical facility at the 16th. The 2026 edition introduced “If You Throw, You Go” policies because even organizers recognize limits exist.
Coody, Fitzpatrick, Gotterup, and Højgaard played Thursday morning in relative calm. Their weekend counterparts inherit the fully activated version—the one that generates $400 million in economic impact while also generating arrest records that would end careers at any other stop.
The question isn’t whether players can handle it. The question is how long “it’s all good fun” is sustained when the private reality looks more like survival.
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