Even at a Premium Price, Playing TPC Scottsdale Near WM Phoenix Open Time is a Must

You've been watching TPC Scottsdale on TV for years, including the famous 16th hole. Gary Van Sickle suggests playing it while the tournament infrastructure is there.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Welcome to The Colosseum. The other Colosseum, that is.

That would be the par-3 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale. It is The Loudest Hole in Golf, which it annually proves during the raucous party known as the WM Phoenix Open. It was dubbed The Colosseum because it is surrounded by grandstands and towering luxury boxes, and feels like an arena (powered by adult beverages) featuring pro golfers as gladiators and fans as ruthless emperors giving thumbs up or thumbs down with deafening roars of approval and boos of faux disgust.

The only things missing are chariot races, lions and a defrocked general named Maximus. (See Russell Crowe’s documentary, “Gladiator.” Technically, I suppose, it’s a movie.)

This Colosseum is one of golf’s best-known holes but it has a secret. Tell us, Maximus …

The par-3 16th may be the least sexy hole on your bucket list of famous golf holes to play. What? It’s true. Without the Phoenix Open chaos and cacophony, No. 16 is an ordinary, nondescript par-3 with a green guarded by a few standard-fare bunkers. Compare it to the island-green 17th hole at the Players Championship. Take away Pete Dye’s intimidating lake, and it’s just a short iron to a large green. But you can’t take away the lake. It’s always there.

Take away the 20,000 or so Phoenix Open fans who roar a nanosecond after a golfer’s club makes contact with the ball on the 16th tee (or sometimes a nanosecond before contact—partying is such an inexact science), and you’ve got a short iron to a large green. It is Plain Jane. But during the WM Phoenix Open, it is G.I. Jane. Tough, daunting and indefatigable.

TPC Scottsdale is worth playing if you can swallow the supersized price. Sure, you can get it down a little. A random check of GolfNow.com tee times for Feb. 28, for instance, shows cheaper afternoon times—$449 after noon; $389 mid-afternoon; $329 at 3:10 p.m. With a sunset at 6:24 p.m. and all those fellow hacks grinding ahead of you, it’ll be dark before you reach the dramatic and sizzling finishing holes. You can pay less in the heat of summer, of course, but better bring oven mitts.

I have played maybe 10 rounds at TPC Scottsdale over three decades. I’d regale you with my 16th-hole highlights if I had any. Some pars, some bogeys. On my last round there in December a few years ago, I do recall hitting a shot that caught a sudden tempestuous gust of wind or backwash from a private jet’s takeoff from nearby Scottsdale Airport or a particularly bad bounce or … O.K., O.K., I blocked it WTFR right. Way right. My ball was almost into a small pile of scaffolding where the stands were still being pieced together. Two chips later, I was on the green, where I lipped in a proud bogey putt from six feet.

It is cooler, in my possibly relevant opinion, to play TPC Scottsdale shortly before or shortly after the Phoenix Open, when the grandstands are mostly in place. (It takes a few months to put them up and again to dismantle them.) How often will you have a chance to play a tour course with grandstands as backdrops? It’s a value-added experience. Without the grandstands, the TPC holes barely look recognizable to us Phoenix Open regulars. Empty of stands, the 16th reminds me of William Shatner without his toupee. A little sad.

The TPC is a fun place to play, even if Golf Digest inexplicably ranks it only No. 29 in Arizona. (Seriously?) It is barely desert golf with wide fairways, large greens and mostly cleared-out desert areas. Many Phoenix-area courses force you to take an unplayable lie for any shot hit offline because the ball keeps rolling until something stops it, like cactus or spiny trees or a boulder that not even Tiger Woods’s fans, if they were there, could budge.

The front nine is mostly flat and has two memorable holes. One is the par-5 3rd hole that you might reach in two if you play from the correct tee—558 yards from the back, probably not your correct tee; 510 yards from the resort tee. A barranca slices across the fairway in case of a mishit shot. It’s uphill to the green and while it should be an easy par-5, it usually doesn’t work out that way.

Downhill par -3s have innate appeal. I like the 4th hole, 183 yards from the back; 141, resort tee. The green has tricked me repeatedly. Plus, the swank Fairmont Scottsdale Princess Resort & Spa, a fabulous spot you should aspire to, looms behind the green.

The back nine is why you’re here. The 10th is a curvy par-4 that looks like all bunkers, no fairway. The 11th is a long par-4 between water left and desert right. Tour players make the 192-yard 12th hole look easy, but it’s not. An island of desert blocks the 13th hole’s winding fairway, so you’ve got to go CNN or Fox (left or right), and there’s water left of this par-5 green. Fourteen plays deceivingly long and slightly uphill with a green less friendly than an IRS agent.

Then you reach the drama queens. The 15th is an island-green par-5. You don’t see many of those. You know you should play conservative even if you pound a drive into the Go Zone, but you will invoke the Tourist Rule: I didn’t come 3,000 miles to lay up. Especially if this is going to be your only $525 chance.

Sixteen is a birdie chance for tour players with nerve. The 17th is the genius of designers Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish on display. It’s a drivable par-4 with water off the green’s left edge, a very risky business. The green is long and narrow, and the water is in play over the green, too. What I’ve learned is that no matter where I miss this green, it’s a tough second shot to get close. The fairway bunker is almost as bad as the water left. It’s a truly enticing, truly annoying hole. I have made zero birdies there, but I’m not bitter. Much.

The water to the left of the 17th green (and in front of skyboxes for the WM Phoenix Open) swallows many overaggressive drives on the decision-inducing par 4.  :: Allan Henry/USA TODAY Sports

The 18th looks fairly easy during the Phoenix Open. The tour players blast drives over the lake with ease and hit short-iron in. Not so, we average golfers. We bail right, away from the water and into the fairway bunkers. That’s a recipe for making a non-par. I birdied this hole once because I failed to follow the recipe.

It’s the back nine that puts TPC Scottsdale on your bucket list. Every hole has an identity. I guarantee there aren’t 28 other courses in Arizona that can say that. Most of those aren’t on your bucket list, either.

The best part of playing a course that hosts a PGA Tour event is the inside knowledge it provides. When you watch the event on TV, you’ll think, Hey, I was behind that same tree and I was dead—what’s the pro going to do? Or, I had that putt, and it was surprisingly fast; I wonder if the pro knows that. Having that background takes your interest to the next level.

Playing the 16th with super-loud fans like in the Phoenix Open would do that, too, but the only way to get anything resembling that Colosseum experience is to buy a spot in the WM Phoenix Open Wednesday pro-am. That will run you $15,000.

TPC Scottsdale’s $525 greens fee doesn’t sound like such a bad deal now, does it?