Where unwritten rules go to die: Why WM Phoenix Open is PGA Tour's best non-major

PGA Tour events are all about respect for the players and the golf course. Stay still and quiet when a player addresses his golf ball, applaud the great shots and leave the venue as pristine as you found it. 

Those are the rules for spectators attending PGA Tour events, but every year they get thrown in the trash at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, which begins Thursday. 

TPC Scottsdale is a golf course where the unwritten rules go to die. It's where half a million fans — many enjoying adult beverages — populate the picturesque desert every year. Some of them lined up at the gates in the dead of night to make a run for the biggest party in golf.

That party, of course, is hosted by the par-3 16th hole. Measuring just over 160 yards, it's one of the most straightforward holes in the desert any other week of the year. But on Waste Management week, 20,000 seats envelop the hole to create a stadium atmosphere you can't find anywhere else in golf.  

It's the only hole on the PGA Tour where volunteers holding up "quiet please" signs are as useless as Rory McIlroy's putter on a major championship Sunday. It's the only hole where players will be congratulated with a symphony of boos for hitting a tee shot 30 feet away from the pin. It's the only hole where an ace brings forth a rain shower of beer and causes local scientists to wonder why their seismographs started to jump.

"It seems like every year it gets crazier and crazier," Justin Thomas said of the unique hole. "But it’s so hard to control your adrenaline, you have so many juices pumping and you’re kind of like hands are tingling and it’s a little shaky. ... The fans are unbelievable, they are what makes this event what it is."