TPC Scottsdale — Stadium Course

The WM Phoenix Open is the loudest, most heavily attended event on the PGA Tour calendar. It has been played on the Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale since 1987, one year after Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish completed the design. During tournament week, roughly 700,000 spectators pass through the gates across seven days. The par-3 16th, played to a green enclosed by temporary grandstands seating 20,000, operates as a purpose-built colosseum where birdies are cheered like touchdowns and pars receive polite indifference. It is the only fully enclosed hole on the PGA Tour, and it has become the most recognized par 3 in American tournament golf for reasons that have nothing to do with architecture and everything to do with atmosphere.

When visitors play the Stadium Course outside of tournament week, the experience is fundamentally different and worth understanding on its own terms. The grandstands are gone. The desert is quiet. The 16th plays as a straightforward par 3 of roughly 160 yards to a green that, without the noise and the crowd, reveals itself as a well-defended but unremarkable short hole. The contrast between tournament spectacle and daily-fee reality is part of what makes the round memorable. You are playing the same hole that produced Phil Mickelson's ace in 2024 and Sam Ryder's in 2022, but you are playing it in silence, with the Sonoran Desert stretching to the mountains in every direction. It is a strange sensation, and a good one.

The rest of the course deserves more attention than the 16th's celebrity tends to allow. Weiskopf and Morrish designed a layout that rewards positioning over raw distance. The par-4 holes, in particular, place a premium on finding specific sectors of the fairway to open up approach angles to greens that are well protected by bunkers and the natural desert terrain. The 15th, a par 4 that doglegs around a lake, is the most strategically demanding hole on the course and the one that tends to decide professional tournaments. Players who drive to the correct side of the fairway have a manageable approach; those who chase distance from the wrong angle face a carry over water to a shallow green. The scoring difference between the two strategies is significant.

The desert landscape is present but not overwhelming. Unlike the more dramatic target-golf courses north of Scottsdale, the Stadium Course was designed for televised tournament play, which means wide fairways, accessible greens, and enough room for gallery movement. The desert scrub and native plantings frame the holes without dominating them. First-time desert golfers who are apprehensive about forced carries will find the Stadium Course more forgiving than Troon North or We-Ko-Pa.

Course conditioning reflects the PGA Tour pedigree. The Bermuda grass fairways are maintained to tournament standards year-round, and the overseeded ryegrass that arrives for winter play creates a surface that rolls firm and true. The greens, predominantly Bermuda overseeded with Poa trivialis, run at speeds that would be considered fast at most daily-fee courses but moderate by Tour standards. Bunker sand is consistent and the waste areas are cleanly maintained. The maintenance standard is, frankly, part of what the green fee buys.

The green fee structure reflects the Stadium Course's position at the top of the Scottsdale market. Peak-season rates of $436 to $550, covering January through April, place it among the most expensive public tee times in Arizona. Off-peak summer rates drop to $150 to $300, which represents a different proposition entirely. A summer visitor playing an early morning round at $150 is accessing the same conditioning and the same routing that costs $550 in February. The heat is the trade-off, and for some golfers, it is one worth making.

The practice facility is comprehensive: a full-length range, short game area, and putting green that replicates the speeds and contours of the course. For golfers flying in and heading directly to the course, the practice facilities justify arriving 45 minutes before the tee time rather than the standard 30.

The Champions Course, TPC Scottsdale's second layout, offers a less expensive complement for golfers who want a second day at the same facility. But the Stadium is the draw, and a single round here is enough to understand why the WM Phoenix Open consistently leads the Tour in attendance. The course was designed to host a spectacle and, even in its quiet daily-fee mode, retains a sense of occasion that most resort courses cannot match. Whether the green fee represents good value depends on how much weight a golfer places on that intangible quality. For many, it is the round they talk about when they return home.