The Waste Administration Open has at all times been rowdy — however in 2024 it crossed the road into uncharted territory.
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The previous 12 months had all of it — loopy profitable streaks, new main champs, a major-week arrest (!) and extra. With 2025 on the horizon, our writers are trying again on the most memorable moments from 2024.
No. 15 — Charley Hull goes viral
No. 14 — LIV, LPGA CEOs say goodbye
No. 13 — Solheim Cup parking fiasco
How the WM Phoenix Open went off the rails in 2024
Nick Taylor gained the 2024 WM Phoenix Open in thrilling style, besting Charley Hoffman in a playoff to say his fourth Tour title. Most years within the desert, a journeyman’s win in additional time can be a heartwarming story that put a punctuation mark on a profitable week. Nonetheless, 2024 was something however an abnormal 12 months at TPC Scottsdale.
The 2024 WM Phoenix Open will go down in infamy — and nearly solely for what occurred exterior the ropes.
The annual early-season Tour cease in Scottsdale, Ariz. has lengthy been referred to as the largest get together in golf. With loads of boozed-up followers and monstrous stadium builds — headlined by the stands surrounding the sixteenth gap — the Phoenix Open is in contrast to some other match in golf.
This popularity — whereas rowdy — has largely not prompted any main points within the match’s almost century-long historical past. Positive, there have been minor heckling incidents and the occasional over-served patron, however for probably the most half, the enjoyable has been comparatively innocent.
That each one modified in 2024.
Because the match has grown in reputation through the years, the id of the occasion has shifted. What was a golf match performed in a party-like ambiance has was a rager with a golf match hooked up. If you happen to arrived at TPC Scottsdale simply to look at some golf this previous February, you had been within the minority.
The 2024 Wm Phoenix Open really began considerably tame. Thursday and Friday featured crummy climate (by Scottsdale requirements) and it helped hold the crowds considerably subdued. When play was suspended on Friday night, there was optimism the weekend would go off and not using a hitch. The weekend, nonetheless, shortly was an unmitigated catastrophe.
The gates opened early on Saturday morning, and the followers shortly set to work pounding drinks. It didn’t take lengthy earlier than issues acquired rowdy.
Social media exploded with movies of followers stumbling down the soggy hills. Grown males had been photographed handed out beneath bushes and the heckling of golfers from exterior the ropes turned increasingly more widespread.
GOLF’s Claire Rogers was on the bottom and had this to say about what she noticed:
“I noticed extra chaos within the final eight hours than I’ve cumulatively within the final decade of my life. I noticed males bleeding from the face, folks napping on muddy hills and adults knocking one another over as a result of they couldn’t stroll straight. Image the primary couple of minutes of attempting to exit a sold-out live performance and multiply it by 15. That’s the place we had been at.”
