If you wanted some excitement on Super Bowl Sunday, the Waste Management Phoenix Open was far more exciting than that championship football game.  The 16th hole Roman ampitheater at TPC Scottsdale created more drama than the grass of Bad Bunny.  Scottie Scheffler, who is now expected to win every tournament he enters, was 2 over par after Round 1 and nauseating commentary from the Golf Channel that Scheffler’s streak of 65 tournaments without missing the cut was in jeopardy.  It’s amazing how much drivel these guys can drone on about.  Unlike the possibility of the New England Patriots coming back in the second half, the real question was whether Scheffler could win the tournament and he almost did as he finished tied for third.  The 16th hole provided its usual share of antics where the pros take the tee to the cheers of 20,000 people screaming at the player.  Shots that find the green are cheered and misses are met with a crescendo of boos.  I particularly enjoyed the fate of Joel Dahmen in round 1, who missed the green badly to the right of the hole by about 45 feet.  The boos reigned down on Joel as he proceeded to focus on the task at hand and proceeded to hole his chip shot as the trailing notes of boos turned into a bedlam of cheers.  Dahmen then proceeded to reward the crowd by tossing new baseball caps into the crowd as a reward for their performance.  Unfortunately for Dahmen, he would eventually miss the cut by a stroke.

Chris Gotterup won the event in a sudden death playoff after draining a long putt on the 18th hole to catch the faltering Hideki Matsuyama.  Matsuyama suffered from a faulty driver during the final round and it finally did him in on the first playoff hole as he knocked his tee shot  into the water.  Unfortunately, Matsuyama became distracted as he had an opportunity to hole a putt on 18 for victory but noises emanated from the crowd and seemed to disorient him as he missed badly.  More noise in his backswing on the first playoff hole forced him to back-off and his recoil did not work as he hoisted his drive into the water.

Make no mistake, Gotterup won this tournament with a blistering 31 on the back nine in the final round.  Gotterup is a power player with significant length off the tee  and his putter caught fire on that back nine, which enabled him to catch Matsuyama.  I don’t believe Matsuyama would have yielded this event as only Gotterup seemed to be the player that had to be watched, while Schleffer quickly climbed the leader board. Gotterup is the real deal and is now ranked 5th in the world after his initial victory at the Scottish Open in 2024, where he was able to vanquish Rory McIlroy.  Gotterup has the tools to be a real force on tour as he is currently on a roll, where his short game is cashing in on the benefits of his significant power and length off the tee.

The event had the immense crowd of at least 500,000 fans during the four days along with the usual amount of disruptions and bad behavior.  In 2026, these incidents were relatively minor as they are usually caused by the beverages of choice especially when compared to 2025 and some prior years when the event faced some risks of restrictions from the PGA Tour.

TPC Scottsdale is a wonderful venue for a PGA event and my favorite course in the Scottsdale area.  The course offers significant variety of holes that enable the player to use every club in the bag.  There are also a number of holes such as the closing holes with significant risk/reward potential.  The 16th hole “thing” could use a little creativity and it’s getting tiresome to see the same raucous behavior that emanates from the stands, which probably causes most of the trouble with the police.  Perhaps a side competition on the hole during the event would change up the current state of affairs.