Chaos marred the third round of the Waste Management Open in Phoenix as the gates were shut and alcohol sales halted, with viral social-media videos depicting drunkenness, arrests and at least one fight breaking out.
Earlier a woman who fell out of a grandstand on the infamous ‘Stadium Hole’ 16th was taken away in an ambulance, but while it was reported that her injuries were non-life threatening, she was kept in hospital.
Meanwhile, there were other fans detained in police cells amid scenes that will surely shock the game and put the Tour under increased pressure to introduce restrictions to curtail the wildness at future tournaments.
The Tour stop at TPC Scottsdale is easily the best attended event in the sport, but, ironically and perhaps tellingly, has long had the reputation of being the most un-golf like venue on the circuit. But with what was reported to be a crowd exceeding 200,000 on Saturday, the scenario veered from the raucous well out of bounds into the ugly and downright dangerous, with the police and organisers forced to take unprecedented action to quell the madness.
Fans were denied entry by mid-afternoon, despite having tickets. The slopes and banks on the course usually help to accommodate so many but with downpours causing delays in the opening days, the hillsides were not fit for galleries to sit on and were transformed into mudslides. Bare-chested individuals took this description too literally and were pictured using them as luge tracks, as seen in the videos below.