The Waste Management Phoenix Open is just 2 months away, and if you’ve still not secured your tickets to be there – or perhaps you’re looking for the perfect Christmas gift for your sports-loving spouse – then don’t fret! Tickets are still up for grabs for this event, which is one of the biggest highlights of the PGA Tour season.
After all, you don’t earn the nickname “The Greatest Show on Grass” for nothing. The WM Phoenix Open has been a permanent fixture on the PGA Tour since 1944, but it was first held almost a century ago in 1932, then known as the Arizona Open. It was in 1987 that the tournament – which had moved around a range of courses over the decades – finally settled at TPC Scottsdale, and the Stadium Course would prove the perfect setting for it to flourish into the behemoth that it is today.
The course’s par-3 16th hole, measuring in at approximately 163 yards, is surrounded on all sides by a 20,000-seater grandstand, making it one of the most unique holes in all of golf. Fittingly, the hole is known as “The Coliseum,” and fans lucky enough to snap up a seat will be hoping to see the ultimate achievement in golf: a hole-in-one. There have been 11 aces on that hole over the years, including not 1 but 2 holes-in-one during the 2022 edition, sending the crowd suitably wild.
The spectators in The Coliseum are but a fraction of the total attendance, however, which can exceed 200,000 people in a day and more than 700,000 over the course of the tournament – numbers even the majors and the Ryder Cup can scarcely dream of.
In 2024, fans will be arriving in their droves to see if Scottie Scheffler can win for the 3rd year running. The American triumphed in a playoff against compatriot Patrick Cantlay in the 2022 edition, while he finished last year’s competition 2 shots clear of closest rival Nick Taylor. If Scheffler wins again this time around, he’ll become only the 2nd player to win the Phoenix Open on 3 consecutive occasions after the legendary Arnold Palmer did so between 1961 and 1963. Tickets start at just USD $10 for the practice rounds and $58 for the tournament rounds.
