The legend of the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale, home of the Waste Management Phoenix Open, grows year by year, with thousands of fans gathering around the par 3 each day of the tournament in a raucous celebration.
Fan antics have grown and changed over the years, like booing players who miss the green with their tee shot or those players who do not take advantage of scoring opportunities, like birdie putts. One of the more recent traditions among the fans in the grandstands at the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale is the beer snake.
The TPC Scottsdale beer snake is is taking shape each day on the short hole. The beer cups at the WM Phoenix Open are recyclable and reusable, and they're green to go along with the color of turf, as well as the idea of going green to limit waste. The fans are piling them up quickly, and they're looking great at the Phoenix Open.
The beer snake is about 20 cups per foot of the beer snake, meaning hundreds of cups are in each beer snake created.
The first time a beer snake was seen at a sporting event was in 1969 at Wrigley Field in Chicago, with the Cubs playing baseball. It's taken hold in plenty of other places at times over the years. However, in recent memory, fans might associate a beer snake with the XFL franchise, the D.C. Defenders.
In the comeback season for the spring football league, Washington, D.C., fans turned the grandstands at Audi Field into a place for drinking and partying. The fans would gather empty beer cups from around several sections in the stadium and stack them up, collecting so many that they could be run up the rows of the stadium, zigging and zagging along the way. The beer snake got so large that it went up nearly 40 rows of the stadium, getting borderline unwieldy.
The D.C. Defenders made a critical error in trying to prohibit the fans from making beer snakes, though they quickly reversed course once they realized they had offended their fun-loving fan base.
