SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Adjustments are coming to subsequent 12 months’s WM Phoenix Open within the wake of a sequence of incidents involving followers and golfers, overcrowding on the course and the suspension of each admissions and alcohol gross sales on Saturday.
Probability Cozby, the manager director of the Thunderbirds, the civic group that hosts the Phoenix Open, informed the Golf Channel on Monday that the event is already methods to repair the problems that plagued the most important event on the PGA Tour this 12 months.
“I believe that you will notice an entire operational change of how we handle, actually, our Friday and Saturday, however the complete week,” Cozby mentioned. “We’re very pleased with what we have constructed. I believe, we have been event of the 12 months on the PGA Tour 5 of the final seven years. However we do not like what occurred on Saturday. The gamers don’t love what occurred on Saturday. Our followers don’t love what occurred on Saturday, and, so, nothing is off the desk.”
Cozby mentioned the Phoenix Open’s management group spent “5 or 6 hours” Saturday afternoon as followers have been beginning to depart brainstorming what adjustments wanted to occur. The preliminary focus might be on the sale of normal admission tickets and the event’s “full safety plan.”
The Phoenix Open offered out of normal admission tickets for Friday and Saturday, traditionally the 2 most-attended days of the event, after placing caps on each days. The Phoenix Open stopped asserting attendance numbers after the 2018 event, when it set event information for attendance with 191,400 individuals on Friday and 216,818 individuals on Saturday.
Cozby defined that the onslaught of rain final week led the grounds on the TPC Scottsdale, the place the Phoenix Open has been performed since 1987, to grow to be muddy and slick, which pressured followers to stroll alongside the concrete paths as an alternative of utilizing the grassy hills to sit down and stroll.
That “actually created vital congestion to the place, finally, on Saturday we did not do something completely different from a ticketing or fan perspective as we have executed in years previous,” Cozby mentioned. “However since areas of the golf course weren’t usable, the choice was made by our safety companions and our group to shut the entrance gate, to shut the concession stands, to shut alcohol gross sales. We opened up all of our safety blowouts on the complete course to soundly take away our followers from the course and get every part again underneath management and attempt to get by that Saturday, which was a really powerful day.”
It rained 1.14 inches over the course of final week, in response to the Nationwide Climate Service. On common, Arizona will get between 7 and eight inches of rain a 12 months.
Cozby mentioned the event determined to cease letting followers in on Saturday when a big paved street that runs alongside the correct fairways of the seventeenth and 18th holes was so filled with people who foot visitors wasn’t capable of circulation like regular.
“The advantageous line was actually once we felt like we have been simply at some extent on Saturday the place our followers couldn’t transfer across the golf course,” Cozby mentioned. “And at that second, the correct factor to do was to take the steps that we did.”
Throughout his look, Cozby didn’t deal with whether or not fan habits was the reason for alcohol gross sales being suspended Saturday. On Sunday, Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson and Billy Horschel have been every captured on video having heated interactions with followers.
Johnson informed the Arizona Republic after the event on Sunday that he felt the Thunderbirds “in all probability have to do one thing about it. I am assuming they’re ashamed.”
Johnson added that the event “has been inappropriate and crossed the road since I have been on tour and that is my twenty first 12 months.” Then he identified that he, together with the remainder of the sector, chooses to play within the event.
Cozby acknowledged that the event “didn’t have a great Saturday” and vowed to make adjustments and “make this proper.”
“Saturday at WM Phoenix Open in 2024,” Cozby mentioned, “goes to finish up being a turning level for our event and our group to make our occasion higher.”