2014’s Phoenix Open broke a PGA Tour record with 563,008 attendees. This year’s event will coincide with the Super Bowl, also being hosted in Phoenix. If that wasn’t enough to set another new record already, Tiger Woods has been added to the mix as well.
Woods announced he will return to play in the Phoenix Open for the first time since 2001.
The tournament begins January 29 and tee times are scheduled so it ends about an hour before the football game starts.
The 16th hole at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, known as “The Coliseum”, is reported to support 16,000 spectators after the recent additions to the boxes. 16,000 of the most raucous fans we will see all year get to watch Tiger tee it up on the par 3, a hole he aced in 1997.
“It will be great to return to Phoenix,” Woods said on his website. “The crowds are amazing and always enthusiastic, and the 16th hole is pretty unique in golf.”
Woods has an interesting history at this tournament in addition to his hole-in-one. An orange rolled onto the green in ’01 from the gallery as Tiger putted. In ’99 he had members of the gallery remove a boulder after it was deemed a loose impediment. That same year Scottsdale police detained a heckler and found a gun in his fanny pack.
Tiger is coming off a season that was drastically affected by his bad back. He had surgery in March only to return too soon and aggravate his back again. He played in a total of 9 tournaments culminating in a missed cut at the PGA Championship, missing out on the FedEx Cup playoffs and taking four months off to rest before last month’s Hero World Challenge.
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