The Greatest Show on Grass Resumes at TPC Scottsdale
The WM Phoenix Open is a professional golf tournament that's held at the TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course, a golf course specifically designed for professional golfers and large crowds. The tournament coincides with Super Bowl weekend each year and is uniquely tailored to the fans, which makes the atmosphere feel more like a music festival than a traditional golf event.
Affectionately known as “The People’s Open” and “The Greatest Show on Grass”, it's the highest attended golf tournament and attracts over 850,000 people during the week. In addition, the tournament is the largest zero-waste sporting event in the world and generates over $10 million for local Arizona charities each year.
The golf course is most famous for its par-3, 16th hole that transforms into “The Coliseum” during the tournament and provides fans with one of the most exciting settings in professional sports. Fans line up for hours before the gates open at 7:00 AM for a chance at one of the 4,000 open seats available at “The Loudest Hole in Golf”. They literally sprint to the stands from the gate in order to get one of these coveted seats.
DLF is a longtime partner of TPC Scottsdale and has been supplying the grass seed planted for the tournament for over 30 years. Mike Hills and Dr. Leah Brilman work closely with the agronomy team to test different overseeding options throughout the year and find solutions to new challenges.
For this year’s tournament, the greens were overseeded with a custom mix of Maximum Poa Trivialis, Dominant Creeping Bentgrass and Champion GQ Perennial Ryegrass, and the other areas of the course (tees, fairways and roughs) were overseeded with our popular Champion Fine mix, which contains 80% Perennial Ryegrass and 20% Chewings Fescue. Additionally, the agronomy team incorporated Maximum Poa Trivialis on the green surrounds and approaches for greater turf protection and repair, Defiance XRE Turf-Type Tall Fescue on the lake edges to reduce seasonal damage caused by birds, and Tradition Fine Fescue on the famous church pew mounds in the bunker pictured above.
The entire DLF team should take pride in watching the top golfers in the world play on OUR incredible grass! The tournament will be televised on the Golf Channel and streamed on ESPN+. Additional content is provided below.
