Chaos at the Phoenix Open, no alcohol sales

“I witnessed more chaos in the past eight hours than in the last decade of my life. I saw men bleeding from their faces, people napping on muddy hills, and adults bumping into each other because they couldn’t walk straight.

Imagine the first few minutes of trying to leave a sold-out concert and multiply it by 15. That’s where we were,” recounts Claire Rogers from golf.com about the events that unfolded on Saturday during the PGA Tour’s Phoenix Open.

Due to these incidents, the tournament had to temporarily close its gates and permanently ban alcohol sales.

Phoenix Open, results

“For reference, the walk from the practice area to the 16th tee took me about 12 minutes all week.

Today? Forty-five (45) minutes. The place was packed. A little later, I witnessed a fan storming onto the 16th hole. He dove into a bunker by the green, ran, and was quickly arrested, about 15 seconds later,” Rogers describes. With the closure of the gates, organizers aimed to reduce the number of spectators as some of them exited amid a dirty landscape filled with bottles, cups, and other plastics, unusual for a golf course, which led to the deterioration of some areas, turning them into alcoholic mud pits.

Security problems arose due to overcrowding, with potential incidents risking injuries, as some parts of the TPC Scottsdale in Arizona became congested. Rahm’s poker hand in Las Vegas “On the spectrum from anti-fun to chaos lover, I probably fall somewhere in the middle, but I definitely started to feel like I was stuck in a crowded fraternity basement in the late afternoon,” golf.com journalist recounts.

Ultimately, the tournament’s third round was suspended and was scheduled to resume on Sunday (15:30), with Canadian Nick Taylor leading at 130 strokes for -13, one stroke ahead of American Sahith Theegala (-12). However, the round could not continue due to inclement weather and will be finished later if possible, potentially postponing the final to Monday.