The tour is at the TPC Scottsdale this week where we'll get so see the "loudest hole in golf". Who do you think's going to play well this week? I think Rickie Fowler and Bill Haas will be the guys to beat. Haas finished fourth last week and a top 10 in a previous Phoenix tourny. Fowler finished second in Phoenix in 2010, nearly winning his first PGA Tour event. Now armed with his first pro win and a T-13 to start 2012, Fowler could break out any week now.
Read more about The 16th Hole
As par 3s go, TPC Scottsdale’s 16th hole is neither gorgeous nor grueling. It doesn’t photograph nearly as well as the seventh at Pebble Beach and it certainly doesn’t baffle the world’s best players like No. 12 at Augusta National. A flat patch of scrub and sand, a splash of grass on a canvas of beige, one doesn’t get the sense course architects Jay Morrish and Tom Weiskopf spent weeks poring over the hole’s finest intracacies.
Tiger Woods aced it back in 1997, before the twin rows of bleachers yielded to a fully enclosed mini-arena, but in terms of historical value, Scottsdale’s 16th really doesn’t rank. Given that it’s the third-to-last hole on the course, you would think the 16th has affected the final outcome of many Phoenix Opens over the years. It hasn’t, particularly when you compare it with the island-green 17th at TPC Sawgrass, which has become a cemetery of dashed hopes at The Players Championship.
Quail Hollow’s 17th hole is a better par 3 than Scottsdale’s 16th. Riviera Country Club has a couple of superior short ones. We could go on, but only at the risk of belaboring the point.
In an age when making a lot of noise can make you famous, Scottsdale’s 16th has elbowed its way onto golf’s red carpet simply by turning up the volume on the yahoo factor. This weekend’s telecast will feature plenty of action from the 16th, where the coliseum-like seating capacity has grown to about 20,000, where the atmosphere is has become a cross between a “Let’s Make a Deal” audience and an Alabama-Auburn football game.
