Thwack. Nothing like the sound of a well-struck golf ball. It appears the Thunderbirds have hit the sweet spot once again.
Three rounds into the 2025 WM Phoenix Open and the tournament is getting rave reviews. The PGA Tour is ecstatic. The players are happy. Walk the grounds and you can tell a noticeable difference. The crush of humanity has lessened.
The Thunderbirds have delivered on their promise of better not bigger.
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“So far, we’re very pleased,” Tournament Chairman Matt Mooney said. “Our goal was to make the right tweaks but make sure we also didn’t overcorrect and change the fabric of what is the most successful event on the PGA Tour by a wide margin.”
The WM Phoenix Open was hit by a perfect storm in 2024. Terrible weather. Muddy hills that remained empty, bottlenecking fans into horrible masses of congestion. AWOL volunteers who bailed because of the nasty conditions, leading to a breakdown in protocol. A spike in arrests. A powerful rebuke from the media, much of it heavy-handed.
Two days after the close of the 2024 tournament, Mooney and Thunderbirds Executive Director Chance Cozby flew to Los Angeles, meeting with the Player Advisory Council at Riviera Country Club before the next PGA Tour stop. They vowed to make changes but agreed to avoid drastic measures.
Truth is, the WM Phoenix Open still had considerable leverage. Because the PGA Tour needed our Mardi Gras of golf more than ever. The Tour has been ravaged by LIV defections, anonymous leaderboards, a huge decline in star power and terrible television ratings. They needed to show their sport could still draw big crowds. They needed to show they were still capable of throwing a great party.
To wit: After Emiliano Grillo’s slam-dunk ace on No. 16 on Friday, one PGA Tour official admitted to a friend with great relief: “We needed that.”
“At the end of the day, it’s a lot of fun,” PGA Tour star Scottie Scheffler said. “It’s really cool to be able to play in front of our fans, and this is a week when we get to play in front of a lot of them. As a player, I think it’s a special week.”
Mooney is being hailed for excellent leadership. The overall strategy is working perfectly, from capping general admission tickets at 40,000 and raising ticket prices to the green plastic cups that showered the 16th hole after Grillo’s hole-in-one. It was far less dangerous than the aluminum can projectiles and the cleanup took only three minutes.
Jock Holliman, noted Thunderbird who has been marshaling crowds at No. 16 since 1997, noticed something different in Friday’s viral celebration. He was dutifully doused with a glass of beer. But when he held up his hands to calm the crowd, they actually listened.
“It’s exactly what we want to see: Our fans giving that kind of energy to the players, creating those viral moments, but with an attitude of respect,” Mooney said. “And all this week, it just feels like our community took (all the criticism) personally and responded in a great way.”
Mooney also came up with a game-changing idea. The Thunderbirds build 1,100 feet of new bridges for the tournament, providing an elevated walkway over the crowd in areas of great congestion, including direct access to the practice facility. It gave the players an added degree of security and separation, and it prevented course marshals from having to constantly put up ropes and stop the flow of traffic.
Players loved the new addition, now called “Player’s Moonwalk” in honor of Mooney.
Ever since Tiger Woods’ earth-shaking ace at No. 16 in 1997, the WM Phoenix Open has been a recurring story of victories and comebacks. There are years of wild revelry and drunken shenanigans and huge donations to charity; followed by a tournament that goes awry and jumps the rails; followed by public consternation; followed by shrewd corrections and adjustments from The Thunderbirds.
Yet the travails in 2024 spurred the WM Phoenix Open to do something Cozby had been considering for years, and something most tournaments and businesses would never consider: turn away customers and scale down attendance and revenue streams, ceding profit margins for a better event. And it’s working.
In what feels like karma, the 2025 tournament was blessed with great weather. For three glorious days, the tournament provided what golfers want and what their fans expect. And in a much bigger picture, they are giving the PGA Tour exactly what it needs.
Fun. Relevance. A reason to watch.
Reach Bickley at [email protected]. Listen to Bickley & Marotta weekdays from 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. on Arizona Sports 98.7.
Follow @danbickley
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