The biggest party on the PGA Tour comes raging back to TPC Scottsdale, after an extremely unruly crowd last year during Nick Taylor's triumph led to the funniest moment of Zach Johnson's career.
The constant expansion of the crowd experience at TPC Scottsdale, specifically around the 15-18 stretch of the course has led to the further bolstering of an identity around a course that has nothing to do with the actual hole design(which may be a reason why Rory McIlroy has only played this event twice).
It's always such a stark step down when we go from Pebble Beach to Scottsdale, but the Phoenix Open has always managed to produce good tournaments and exciting moments, so this weekend should prove to be a fun one, at the very least.
On the power rankings front, we hit our first winner last week with my #3 pick in Rory McIlroy at Pebble Beach, so we're looking to keep the ball rolling this week at the WM Phoenix Open. TPC Scottsdale profiles as one of the most course history-reliant courses in terms of predicting performance on the PGA Tour, so this week's picks are going to be guys who have seen prior success at TPC Scottsdale. Also, I'm going to add in a list before the rankings get started of a few honorable mentions for each week, and they're really going to be guys who wouldn't surprise me if they played well this week, but they fell just short of making the cut for the top 9. With that spot of housekeeping out of the way, let's keep the party rocking in Phoenix.
Honorable Mentions: Max Greyserman, Ben Griffin, Harry Hall, Billy Horschel, Maverick McNealy, Alex Smalley