Bring In The Noise

The hole has had an amphitheater vibe since adding skyboxes for the 2006 event. Photo: Nick Doan

"If you can win here, you can win everywhere," DiMarco said. "You know going into it what it will be like. If you let it get to you, it can cost you." He since has interacted amiably with the gallery.

The loudest the 16th got was when Tiger Woods, having won four tournaments in six months as a pro, made a hole-in-one with a 9-iron in 1997. The echoes are still reverberating through the dunes. Woods played again in 1999, when a man with a gun was removed from his gallery on the front nine, and in 2001, when an orange landed on a green as he was over a putt, but hasn't been back since.

Tournament chairman Tim Lewis says: "I thought with the Super Bowl here in town it might attract him this year, but it makes a lot of sense for him to play in Dubai that week financially. We have a hard time competing with that."

Mickelson and a quality field will show up, the players divided in their feelings about the energetic ambiance (in one tour survey Scottsdale ranked first for the best fans and first for the worst fans). But a surprising number profess to enjoy it as a change of pace. Others see it as the wave -- and, yes, they still do the wave at 16 -- of the future on sprawling TPC courses built with many thousands of spectators in mind. (The announced attendance for the week in Scottsdale last year was more than 500,000, presumably the most ever anywhere.)

"It's a heck of an atmosphere -- actually quite fun," Charles Howell III says of the shenanigans at 16. "It's the only week of the year you get it."

Geoff Ogilvy agrees. "It might get old if it was every week, but it's fun once or twice a year. Then 17 is the hardest tee shot because the people on 16 forget about you. They're liable to make as much noise as they can while you're hitting."

Tom Pernice Jr. says, "I think 16 is great. People for the most part are pretty courteous, and it's exciting to play in front of a lot of people."

Jason Bohn says he loves the cocktail-party mood and thinks it's good for other players to get a taste of what Tiger contends with every week. Brett Quigley says he takes one club less to offset the increased rush of adrenaline.

Bernhard Langer and Vijay Singh are not known as the livest wires on the tour, but both express a fondness for the hole -- or at least a tolerance. Langer says the Ryder Cup comes close.

Singh, a two-time winner in Scottsdale, says, "I think it's great to have fans like this. I don't mind it at all -- 16 has always been pretty noisy, but as long as they are noisy after you hit the ball, it's OK with me. I'm just going to enjoy them."

Mickelson, who has jogged through the tunnel onto the tee, is also a fan. "It's an incredible feeling with all the people surrounding the hole," he says. "I love it and hope it doesn't change. The finishing holes lined with so many thousands of people giving that kind of response is a great player's experience. We don't have enough of it."

The course's co-designers, Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish, assisted by local tour player Howard Twitty, built psychological challenges into the final four holes as well as physical challenges. Morrish says, "We tried to design three of the last four as swing holes that could create quick changes in the lead. Then we wanted 18 to be a really demanding par 4 that rewarded a tee shot near the water on the left. Of course, this was back when golf still required shotmaking ability and had not yet become a pitch-and-putt game."

Each hole presents options meant to depend on the outcome of the previous hole or holes. Weiskopf says of 16, "The psychology reverts to 15. If you don't birdie 15, you might get bolder with a short iron in your hands from a clean lie at 16. Or you birdie 15 and you're on a roll and fire at the pin. Then you can go for 17 with a driver or 3-wood."

The design team had no idea the simple-looking, little 16th would become "a rallying point for the unduly enthusiastic and sobriety-challenged portion of the gallery" as Morrish puts it. Weiskopf, citing the example of St. Andrews, always has included a short par 3 and drivable par 4 on his courses. "The 16th looks easy," says Weiskopf, "but if you get sloppy you can lose strokes. The wind can hurt or help, and the players tell me they're often in between clubs, a hard 9 or easy 8, a hard 8 or easy 7. You don't want to miss short or long or the ball will feed away from the green. The main difficulty is the left side of the green. The middle-back bunker on the left is about seven feet deep, and the pin is usually back left the last day." Gary McCord has observed that the bunker is deep enough to develop film in. The easy-looking hole has played to an average score a shade over par.