This month, the PGA Tour will make its second stop in Scottsdale this season, so gear up for great weather, an impeccable course and a stellar field.

 

 

Since the FBR Open is more than a few moons away, this month golf devotees from around the Valley have a prime opportunity to indulge their PGA Tour passions at The Frys.com Open.

The tournament, which ihad its inaugural event at Grayhawk Golf Club in 2007, will remain at the venue through 2009 before transitioning to its permanent home at The Institute Golf Club in Morgan Hill, Calif., in 2010. While the tourney is in town, enthusiasts of the game can engage in the action at an event where the fan experience is taken to the highest level of consideration.

“It’s really an opportunity for the real golf fans here to get close to the players and to be able to almost hear them and the thought processes that they go through when they are out there playing,” says Scott Reid, Frys.com Open Tournament Director. “The FBR is kind of a more social gathering with golf, whereas this is more about the golf with a social aspect to it.”

The desert areas of Grayhawk’s Raptor course enable rope lines to be placed closer to the fairways to allow for galleries, creating an even more intimate spectator setting.

“The rope lines are definitely closer than they are at FBR, and we are able to do that because we don’t have to control a hundred thousand people on a daily basis,” Reid says. “We are controlling around 12,000 people on a daily basis, so it’s definitely a condensed version, which in reality benefits the fans.”

The course preparations leading up to the tournament also make this fall series event an exciting one to watch either on TV or as one of the 50,000 fans expected to visit during the tournament week.

After being aerated in June and overseeded in September, the fairways and greens are in optimal tournament condition and will appear especially emerald on the Golf Channel’s broadcast of the event. In addition to mature rough and the 7, 125-yard course length, the Raptor’s seventh and eighteenth holes (typically par 5’s) will be played as par 4’s, making the scorecard a total par 70.

The course’s locale also helps to attract some of the biggest names in the game, many of whom reside locally.

“There are approximately 25 to 30 PGA Tour professionals that live in Scottsdale,” Reid says. “That gives us an advantage over some other fall series events because they are here and they’ll play because they are at home. We by far have the strongest field of the fall series and are fully anticipating having the strongest field again.”