American excess at its peak. This week was held the Phoenix Open in Scottsdale, Arizona. An iconic golf tournament of the PGA Tour where more than 700,000 people can gather for a sporting competition and a very alcoholic festival atmosphere. The attraction of this event? Hole number 16, a “par three” that has become legendary to the point of being now surrounded by stands that can accommodate up to 16,000 supporters.
This weekend, the earth shook there twice. Two athletes have achieved a “hole in one“, the Grail for who wants to become the rockstar of the day: the American Sam Ryder, Saturday, and the Mexican Carlos Ortiz, Sunday, have therefore covered the 150 meters in a single attempt. Enough to become heroes in this arena nicknamed the “Colosseum”.
As expected, or feared, the purists will say, the public was completely taken aback. Hundreds of beer glasses flew through the sky and ended their soggy runs on the green. A deluge that would have required fifteen minutes of repair before the next golfer Sam Ryder could hit the track.
The last athlete to have achieved such a performance was the Italian Francesco Molinari in 2015. “It’s the only hole that comes close to this football atmosphere and it’s good that it’s the only one, judged a few years ago the golfer Bubba Watson, as related by the media Slate. You can’t do anything about it. If part of the public takes a dislike to you on the 16th for one reason or another, you just have to hope that this bad moment does not last too long and to hope to find you as soon as possible at the start of the 17th. »
The Phoenix Open has the particularity of being listed on the calendar on the same date as the Super Bowl, which paradoxically has increased the attention around this delirious spectacle in the middle of the desert and the cacti. The legend was born in 1997 when Tiger Woods landed a “hole in one” there in front of an ecstatic audience.
Sam Ryder and Carlos Ortiz became the ninth and tenth athletes in history to achieve this performance.
