10 Things You Might Not Know About The Phoenix Open

Posted By Mike Conklin on Jan 30, 2015

By Mike Conklin

The Waste Management Phoenix Open in Scottsdale concludes the same Feb. 1 afternoon of the Super Bowl in Glendale, but don’t worry about where to turn your TV. The final round of golf should be completed before the scheduled kickoff.

The Phoenix Open, which barely registered on the sports Richter scale not that long ago, has emerged as a must-see event in its own right. The star-studded field, TPC Scottsdale course, famed 16^th hole, and enthusiastic galleries turned it into the first, important tourney of a new PGA season.

To get into the swing, here are 10 things you may or may not know about the Open:

1, Its biggest Super Bowl conflict? That would be 2009, when it went into a playoff and overlapped with the Arizona Cardinals playing the Pittsburgh Steelers in Tampa.

2, In 1996, the year the first Super Bowl came to the area (Sun Devil Stadium), the Phoenix Open was played on Wednesday through Saturday to avoid conflicting. This changed when the Super Bowl last came here (University of Phoenix Stadium) in 2008 and the Open’s final round was on Sunday.

3, In 2014, the Open’s third round (Saturday) attendance of 189,722 set the all-time, single-day record for any PGA tournament. The tournament went on to establish a tournament week record of 563,008 fans.

4, The first Open was in 1932. It was discontinued for several years, but revived by Bob Goldwater Sr., who served as event chairman for the Thunderbirds from 1934-51.

5, The tournament was originally the Arizona Open, but mostly known as the Phoenix Open. In 2003, the investment bank Friedman Billings Ramsey became title sponsor (FBR Open). Waste Management took that role in 2010.

6, The Phoenix Thunderbirds, a volunteer civic organization, administer every Open. Since the start, it has raised approximately $94 million for charities. The largest amount from a single tourney came in 2008, when the group donated $8.8 million to local causes.

7, The tournament alternated between the Phoenix CC and Arizona CC before moving to its present home, TPC Scottsdale, in 1987.

8, The event has three 3-time winners: Mark Calcavecchia 1989, 1992, 2001; Gene Littler 1955, 1959, 1969; and Arnold Palmer 1961, 1962, 1963.

9, Long before Annika Sorenstrom and Michelle Wie made headlines in 2003 and 2004 playing—and missing cuts—in men’s PGA tour events, legendary Babe Didrikson Zaharias played in the 1945 Phoenix Open and made the cut. She finished 33d.

10, Legendary Hall of Famer Byron Nelson played in eight Phoenix Opens, won twice, and amassed $3,255 in total earnings. Today, that would not be enough to buy a single, perk-loaded Chairman’s Club ticket ($5,000) to the event.