Tour Guide: Drunk in Phoenix

Welcome back to Tour Guide, a Club TFE weekly preview, review, and ramble around the pro golf scene featuring some of the more insightful voices observing said scene. This week we have the Phoenix Open on tap (that’s a drinking term). Let’s get to it.

FIREWORKS IN PHOENIX

By Joseph LaMagna

Welcome to Phoenix Open week!

Unquestionably, this is one of the most electric non-major championship weeks on the PGA Tour schedule. Amidst the spectacle of drunkenness and every social media influencer in the world looking for opportunities to get on camera, there is a fabulous golf tournament that’s produced drama and an abundance of captivating moments throughout its history.

I realize that within Club TFE I’m preaching to the choir with the following point, but over time it’s only become more evident to me the extent to which the quality of a tournament is tied to the quality of the venue. Put the best golfers in the world on a mediocre test and you’ll get a fine tournament. Put a strong field, even if it doesn’t include all the best players in the world, on a compelling golf course with high shot value and variety, and you’ll typically get a great tournament. TPC Scottsdale is a unique and strong test of professional golf. For my money, the back nine is one of the best back-nines on the PGA Tour.

TPC Scottsdale is a driver-heavy golf course where the golf ball travels far. If your only goal is to lead the PGA Tour in driving distance, skip Pebble Beach and play here. I think an underrated element of TPC Scottsdale is the degree to which it punishes errant drives. TPC Scottsdale ranks among the most penal tour courses in my database for drives that are a little bit offline. If you miss the fairway by a few yards, you can often end up in a cactus, or on some holes like 11, 15, and 17, a water hazard. Some holes, though, afford you some more room off the tee. On the 18th hole, for example, sometimes you’ll see players rip drives down the right side of the hole, eliminating the water from their range of outcomes. The short rough at TPC Scottsdale means you can get away with finding it down the right-hand side of the hole, and you’ll often get a free drop from the hospitality area lining the right side.

If I had to pick an underrated hole that’s representative of the test presented by TPC Scottsdale, I’d probably go with the fifth. Frequently playing at least 470+ yards, the par four fifth has OB down the right side of the hole and stiffly penalizes shots that miss left off the tee as well. It isn’t exactly a hole that gives players a bunch of options; you have to step up and mash a drive down the center/center-left of the fairway. The green is large and has quite a bit of slope, so you’ll likely see some three-putts on that green when players leave themselves ticklish first putts.

Elite drivers of the golf ball and strong mid-iron players tend to excel at TPC Scottsdale, even if they aren’t the best putters in the world. Hideki Matsuyama, who won the event in back to back years in 2016 and 2017, is a solid prototype of the player that should thrive at this tournament. Matsuyama doesn’t drive the golf ball as well as he used to, so I’d keep reasonable expectations this week, but his prime years serve as a useful template for projecting success on this golf course.

One of the players I’m most interested in watching this week is Cameron Young. I’ve staked some of my professional reputation on Cam Young having an impressive 2024 season, and this would be a good week for him to show some form for both our sakes. In two starts in Phoenix, he’s finished T-26 and 64th, and he’s entering the week fresh off an uninspiring 70th place finish at Pebble Beach. However, the Phoenix Open should be a better course fit for Cam Young than his previous results here indicate. He is one of the best drivers of the golf ball in the world, and his elite ball-striking weeks stack up with any other player in the world’s best ball-striking weeks. I suspect he will be near the top of the Strokes Gained: Off the Tee metric this week. If he can flash some of the iron play upside we’ve seen from him in the past, he could easily be in the mix on Sunday.

Enjoy the golf this week. Assuming the 2024 Phoenix Open is anything like previous iterations of the event, we should see plenty of exciting golf shots and fireworks down the closing stretch, like this Shot-of-the-Year candidate from Jordan Spieth last year on 17.

🚨#VIDEO: The Long Lost Bunker Shot that Michael Greller says is the “Best bunker shot Jordan has ever hit.” Unreal 👀🔥 pic.twitter.com/xh3TD413F2

— Spieth Legion (@SpiethLegion) February 12, 2023

MEMORY LANE: THE SNAPPER

By Brendan Porath

In 1997, it was a holy grail. Now it’s just a used, dirty dish, and Nick Price foretold its capture.

“That record is on borrowed time,” said Price. “The big-headed drivers and the quality of the greens and the fact that players are a lot better. I don’t know when it’s going to happen or on which course, but it will.”

Price was speaking of Mike Souchak’s record of 27-under par for a 72-hole tournament on the PGA Tour. In some writing that’s now 27 years old but still applies to the current moment, Gary Van Sickle lead his SI story thusly: “Many people think that because the ball flies farther and straighter, and high-tech clubs make it easier to hit, the highly skilled pros who play on today’s exquisitely maintained Tour courses should put up record numbers.”

At that Phoenix Open, it was Steve Jones who’d put a scare into what was then a 42-year-old record, one that had been under assault almost monthly in the late ‘90s. It would not go down until the following year’s Hawaiian Open, when John Huston took it to 28-under. It has since fallen many times, thanks in large part to Kapalua’s spot on the schedule (Cam Smith the latest at 34-under).

But in 1997, that was a number of significance and Jones was a sensation. That ’97 Phoenix Open is largely remembered for Tiger Woods’s hole-in-one and the subsequent celebration, a more organic, less branded, corporatized, and social-media driven one than exists today at 16. But aside from some juice Brian Harman provided last summer during his Open run, Jones’s work is largely overshadowed by that all-time Tiger ace clip.

1/25/97 – 21-year-old Tiger Woods nailed a hole-in-one on the Phoenix Open's 16th hole. His Saturday Ace remains the most famous and potentially loudest cheered shot in the history of the Open. Steve Jones won with a 258 (-26) winning by 11 shots. Woods finished T-18 (-9). #WMPO pic.twitter.com/ONh856cmiD

— Arizona Sports History (@AZSportsHistory) January 25, 2023

His run at the Souchak record did not come during some cupcake of a week with droves assaulting the TPC design. Rather, and speaking to Jones’s talent at the moment, the 26-under 258 was good enough for an 11-shot margin of victory over Jesper Parnevik. “This would’ve been a great tournament if not for Steve Jones,” muttered Phil Mickelson. His 16-under score at the 36-hole midpoint did match the PGA Tour record.

Jones cruised to the double-digit win despite hitting just over half of his fairways on a course that the pros assumed would beat them up due to some augmented rough. “With the deep rough and the crusty greens, I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, nobody’s going to go crazy this week,” said Rick Fehr. “It shows you how good these players are. The only way to keep them from doing that is to set up the course the way the USGA does at the Open.”

Jones dominated in what had become the second act of his career, which came following a dirt bike accident in the early ‘90s from which he took more than three years to fully come back. The accident wrecked his left hand, and the damage to his ring finger was so significant that according to Van Sickle, “he has been forced to use a reverse-overlap grip–essentially a putting grip–on all his shots.” The asskicking at the Phoenix Open served as a bit of added validation to his U.S. Open victory the prior summer, the first win during his comeback from the accident.

Embed from Getty Images

With the driver not exactly dialed, the 11-shot win largely came via his old school Bulls Eye putter Jones had had in the bag for 15 years. He needed just 99 putts for the week, nine fewer than runner-up Jesper. But he needed one fewer to match the Souchak record, even though some bad info from playing partner Fulton Allem had him under the impression he’d done so on the 72nd hole. After Phoenix, Jones would go on to win two more times to tally eight PGA Tour victories (including that U.S. Open) in a 10-year span that included all the time off from injury. This week in Phoenix was a flash of the talent and, as Mike Hulbert relayed, “I played with Tiger Woods on Sunday, and even he said there was no way anybody could catch Steve.”

ONE SHOT FROM LAST WEEK

By Will Knights

✅ Bunker
✅ Fried egg
✅ Left-handed shot

The best bogey you'll see today. pic.twitter.com/bhtXOLk1I2

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 3, 2024

When under pressure, Wyndham Clark has shown a tendency to be late with his upper body, hitting the high-right ball that plagues so many golfers, both professional and otherwise. His tee shot on the 72nd hole of the U.S. Open, for instance. During his Saturday 60 at Pebble Beach, Clark made a couple of loose swings down the stretch that reminded me of that shot at LACC.

Take his tee shot on the par-3 12th, for example. After making yet another birdie on No. 11, it was very clear that Clark started to think about shooting 59. The 12th is normally a difficult hole, but the soft conditions meant any ball that hit the green would stop dead. Clark, clearly wondering what it would be like to break 60 at Pebble, made a nervy, tentative swing with a long iron and hung his tee shot out to the right. What resulted was a near disaster that ultimately ended in a heroic bogey. Still, Clark’s tee shot serves as a reminder that when we get nervous, the body doesn’t tend to work the same way, often leading to an open club face. We love a relatable golf shot!

LET’S REMEMBER SOME GUYS

By Brendan Porath

In looking at Phoenix Open history, I went down a sidestreet and did some research on 1991 winner Nolan Henke, a three-time All-American at Florida State.

I would like to know more about Mr. Henke from my elders, perhaps in the comments, and plan to do more research on this three-time PGA Tour winner.

Until next week…when Joseph, Brendan, and Andy will be on site at Riviera. Shout if there’s anything you want to see or read here for Riv or going forward on a weekly basis.