The Golf or the Drink?

Phoenix should be a wake-up call

Nearly 40 years ago, in 1985, I covered my first tournament out west. The PGA Tour stop at Riviera Country Club was between having Glen Campbell and Nissan in its title and, as it had been the case from Macdonald Smith to Ben Hogan and Gene Littler to Arnold Palmer, it was simply the Los Angeles Open, a plain name for a premier event. In two years, it will be a century since Harry Cooper won the first one. That’s golf history, not marketing mumbo jumbo.

In the mid-1980s, reporters and tour golfers, believe or not, sometimes stayed in the same hotel. That week it was the Holiday Inn by the 405 freeway at Sunset Boulevard, a 17-floor circular building that resembled, as some have said, a giant stack of records. It still stands, no longer a Holiday Inn but as the Hotel Angeleno. With tax, a room tonight would be $281. The place still looks like a tall pile of LPs.

I’d been thinking about that ’85 L.A. Open for a few days, even before Tiger Woods mentioned it during his Wednesday press conference at the Genesis Invitational, the venerable tournament’s most recent 21^st century name. Most of Woods’ time was spent talking about his health or that of the PGA Tour, or his new apparel line announced the other day, Sun Day Red. The Tiger skeleton logo is going to have to grow on me.

Woods was speaking about his long history at the L.A. event, which of course includes his first PGA Tour start in 1992, when he was a skinny 16-year-old amateur. In his recall of attending the tournament for the first time as a child, he didn’t nail his age—he had recently turned 9—but sure remembered the headline. As Woods put it, “whenever it was when Lanny won, going away.” That would have been 1985, when the older Wadkins brothers beat Hal Sutton by seven strokes. Tiger would come to know what a runaway victory feels like … and then some.

I’d been thinking about that ’85 L.A Open because how it epitomized the way spectators watched golf before the advent of sky boxes, when “hospitality” was a Coke and hot dog from a concession stand, not a gin and tonic and shrimp cocktail in an exclusive suite. Thirty-nine years ago at Riviera, as across the tour, fans lined up by gallery ropes, sat in what modest bleachers (like the kind you might find at a Little League ball field) were on site or took advantage of grassy hillsides to sit upon. Riviera’s 18^th-green amphitheater remains the king of such settings.

In contrast to that old-school vibe, things got ugly at the WM Phoenix Open last weekend, in what should be a turning point for the event and the tour. Tournament organizers had hyped the party atmosphere for years to the point where everything overloaded on Saturday. There were way too many people allowed on a course saturated by heavy rain and too many intoxicated people, some of whom started fights, urinated in public view, slid shirtless down muddy slopes, or shouted at golfers as they played shots. Scot golf writer John Huggan’s description on social media of the atmosphere (“uncouth abyss”) seemed on point. Even before the significant, startling disorder of Saturday, there were news reports of a spectator falling out of a multi-deck suite and being seriously injured.

Big-time golf certainly isn’t the only sport that has embraced “bro culture,” to have enabled those prone to overdo to do just that. And going back to the 1980s, before the Phoenix Open’s 16^th hole ascended to the debauchery throne, there were party spots on tour. The 17^th hole at Forest Oaks, a former home of the Greater Greensboro Open (now Wyndham Championship) was one such place. Even without much infrastructure, it was the meet-up, drinking location for the rowdy segment of GGO fans. It got so boisterous that officials had to tamp it down, an earlier, scale-model scenario of what WM Phoenix Open organizers will have to do with the situation they have fostered, that morphed into sketchy territory last Saturday. They’ve already indicated that a tough lesson has been learned and that things will change. The events should be a warning, a teachable moment for all who put on tournaments.

Long gone are the days when all golf fans went to tournaments just to watch golf. But when a portion of them go not just to enjoy a couple of beers but to see how much they can drink, the plot has been lost and the hangover can hurt.