What exactly is the WM Phoenix Open?
Every other PGA Tour stop asks for silence. This one hands out cowbells.
The WM Phoenix Open is a regular PGA Tour tournament that happens to be the biggest spectator event in golf — more than 700,000 people over tournament week, all funneling into TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course in North Scottsdale each February. Locals just call it “the Open,” or “the greatest party in Scottsdale that occasionally shows golf.”
Despite the name, it hasn’t been played in Phoenix since 1986. The tournament moved to Scottsdale in 1987, to a course purpose-built for mobs: wide corridors, natural amphitheater mounds, and the now-famous 16th — a par-3 wrapped entirely in grandstands, where 20,000 people scream at a golf ball.
It’s also, quietly, one of Arizona’s great charity machines. The Thunderbirds — the civic group in ridiculous feathered bolo regalia who’ve run this thing since 1939 — have pushed well over $200 million to Arizona nonprofits over the tournament’s life.
When should you actually go?
The honest local answer: Tuesday through Thursday. You’ll see world-class players up close, walk the whole course, and experience the 16th hole loud but not feral. Friday is the pivot point. Saturday is a festival with a golf problem — a quarter of the crowd never sees a single shot, and that’s exactly how they want it. Sunday mellows back out and delivers actual championship drama.
The 16th hole, decoded
The 16th is a 163-yard par-3 that would be forgettable on any other course. Wrapped in three stories of grandstands and skyboxes, it became the loudest hole in golf and the tournament’s entire brand.
What you need to know before you sit there:
- General-admission stadium seats fill by early morning on Friday and Saturday. People sprint from the gates at open — literally sprint, it’s a whole genre of local video — to claim the lower GA rows.
- The etiquette is inverted. Cheer the good shots, absolutely boo the bad ones. Players who embrace it (throwing signed hats, wearing costumes, caddie races back in the day) become crowd legends. Players who don’t… hear about it.
- A hole-in-one here is a life event. Tiger in ‘97, Francesco Molinari in ‘15, Sam Ryder’s beer-storm ace in ‘22, Nick Taylor in ‘24. When it happens, thousands of drinks go airborne. Wear a hat you don’t love.
Logistics that separate locals from tourists
Getting in: The course sits near Hayden Road and Bell Road, next to WestWorld and the Loop 101. There is functionally no public parking at the course. The tournament runs shuttles from big park-and-ride lots (WestWorld being the main one), ride-share drop zones move year to year but stay near Hayden/Bell, and the free bike valet is the single most underrated move in Scottsdale — locals ride the canal paths in and skip all of it.
Money: Bring a card; the tournament went cashless years ago. Early-week tickets are the value play. Skybox and Birds Nest (the after-party concert venue) money is real money.
Sun math: It’s February, which means 45°F at 8 a.m. and 75°F by noon. Layers you can tie around your waist beat a jacket you’ll carry all day. And yes, you still need sunscreen in winter here — the Sonoran sun does not observe the offseason.
How a Depression-era tournament became the biggest show in golf
The Phoenix Open started in 1932, promptly failed, and was revived in 1939 when Bob Goldwater Sr. — brother of the future senator — talked his civic group, the Thunderbirds, into adopting it. For its first five decades it was a pleasant, ordinary tour stop at Phoenix Country Club.
Two decisions made it a phenomenon. First, the 1987 move to TPC Scottsdale, a course literally designed as a stadium — Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish shaped the earth for sightlines, not just shot values. Second, the Thunderbirds’ bet that golf could be a mass-market party rather than a hushed country-club affair. Cheap tickets, huge concert acts at the Birds Nest, and a wink at the noise rules did the rest.
The event has eaten its share of chaos along the way. The 2024 Saturday — rain-soaked, oversold, gates temporarily closed, alcohol sales paused — was national news and forced a genuine reset: capped ticket sales, better entries, more security. The 2025 edition ran noticeably smoother, which locals will tell you was overdue by about a decade.
What it means to Scottsdale
The Open anchors what locals call the “perfect storm week” — it routinely overlaps with Barrett-Jackson’s tail end, the Arabian Horse Show, and the start of spring training. Hotels in Old Town triple their rates. Restaurants put their A-squads on the floor. If you live here, you either lean in or leave town for the week; there’s no third option.
The charity engine is the part outsiders miss. “Tournament week” funds youth sports, hospitals, and food banks across the Valley through the Thunderbirds’ grants — it’s the largest single reason a golf tournament gets civic patience for shutting down half of North Scottsdale every February.
A local’s Saturday survival protocol (if you must)
Go early — gates at 7 a.m., and the difference between 7:30 and 10:30 arrival is roughly ninety minutes of your life in lines. Set a meeting point with your group before you enter; cell networks at the 16th collapse by noon. Eat before 11 or after 2. And book your ride-share pickup walk to the far side of the drop zone — the ten-minute extra walk saves you forty in surge-pricing gridlock. You will not do any of this, because nobody does on their first Saturday. You’ll do it the second year.