Bro-ning Man

February 27, 2018 8:58 PM

The Waste Management Phoenix Open is explored by Spencer Hall in a gonzo piece for SBNation.
posted by batmonkey (21 comments total)

The other day, I was watching a slow-motion film of the Apollo 11 engine ignition and liftoff. As I watched the tail service masts and the platform get blasted by the incredible fire of the rocket exhaust, with everything on fire and thousands of gallons of water instantly flashing to steam, I remarked to my daughter that it looked like a vision of hell.

Reading that article, I have an image of a different circle of hell.
posted by Ickster at 9:55 PM on February 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

I laughed a lot at this, but...

Would only have been gonzo if he had a head full of snakes, a belly full of brownies, and a bottle of tequila in his hand.

When is this event held? I really want to go...
posted by Windopaene at 10:06 PM on February 27, 2018

Eh, fine, gonzo-lite, for comfort of the pedantically parochial gatekeepers of the world, but it gave me the same feeling of being brought into a world I wouldn't ordinarily have anything to do with, just as HST's work gave me way back when I first read it, so I'm sticking with it.
posted by batmonkey at 10:36 PM on February 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

A good chunk of why its crazy is because its at roughly the same time as spring training, which is also super popular for bachelor parties. And its spring break for Arizona State too, so its a tradition for lots of alumni to go. ASU being a famous party school. Its a weird event but its not really a mystery why.
posted by fshgrl at 11:28 PM on February 27, 2018

Probably overthinking this, but I like to imagine that the author snuck a recursive description of the article into this paragraph:

And if the goal really is to get weird, then all the non-natives flocking to the Waste Management Phoenix Open can get the exact type of weird they want: The least threatening, most conventional type of weird imaginable.

posted by msalt at 11:32 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think this sounds like not particularly my scene, but if I ended up there, I'd have a p. good time. As long as I wasn't hanging out with the author.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 11:34 PM on February 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

This is why I hate Phoenix and why I left. It is the pinnacle of Phoenix bro culture, with calling some random dude a fag at a QT in Glendale a close second, followed by getting heat stroke and dehydration from chugging jaeger while hiking Camelback Mountain in third.
posted by gucci mane at 12:01 AM on February 28, 2018 [6 favorites]

The Google Maps imagery of that course was definitely take at a different time of year from the aerial photo in the article.
posted by ckape at 1:48 AM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love golf as a participatory sport while mostly hating it as a culture...but I think I’d take the country club bullshit over this nonsense.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:30 AM on February 28, 2018

Crap. "Waste Management Phoenix Open" is what I set my email password to after reading that one xkcd about password strength.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 5:48 AM on February 28, 2018 [14 favorites]

Brilliant
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:59 AM on February 28, 2018

haha... this is in my neighborhood in North Scottsdale. It comes right after the Barrett-Jackson auto auction and right before Spring Training, which is to say we get two solid months of drunken white people roaming around in fancy cars. (The term of art is "$30,000 Millionaires") While none of that is my scene, I enjoy the general mayhem.
posted by ph00dz at 6:04 AM on February 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

> ...the broheim antipode to the entire Nashville bachelorette phenomenon...

I understand almost nothing in this phrase. Is this what white people are doing once they’re too old for Spring Break vacations now?
posted by ardgedee at 6:13 AM on February 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

Waste Management Phoenix Open is going to be the name of my new band. We'll do bluegrass covers of stadium rock anthems.
posted by cmfletcher at 6:56 AM on February 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

It's like people took Happy Gilmore as instruction on how to do a golf tournament. It definitely seems to generate plenty of pearl clutching from the golf purists -- a snide take on the hoi polloi wrecking their fun
posted by k5.user at 7:26 AM on February 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

this is a window into the invisible culture/class war between rich frats like those in Ivies with date-rape drugs and pretentious secret society shit, and party frats with date-rape drugs and where drinking and fucking yourself up physically takes the place of secret societies

In 1999, a heckler following Tiger Woods was taken down by security. The heckler had a gun on him. In 2001, someone heaved an orange onto the green while Woods was putting — a weird, off-putting moment for anyone, but a legitimately scary one for someone two years removed from the heckler incident. Woods stayed away from the tournament for fourteen years before returning in 2015.

and of course it comes with a bit of the ol' invisible race politics too
posted by runt at 7:45 AM on February 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

It took me until The Card Cheat's comment to realize the linked article was describing a golf tournament rather than a municipal waste industry convention. I was pretty fascinated before that.
posted by nickmark at 8:10 AM on February 28, 2018 [5 favorites]

The photograph of the golf hole surrounded by a stadium looks like one of those Fun With Photoshop exercises.

Honestly, I'm not sure which is worse: the frat bro dystopia described in this article, or a typical golf tournament, which I assume is entirely populated by cranky older white people wearing ugly golf-leisure wear. I'd say the bros are having more fun, even if it's obnoxious, puke-laden, alcohol-poisoned fun.

I think that golf is more fun to watch on television anyway. The whole point of watching golf is to see whether experienced professionals are going to totally screw up under pressure and miss the putt or launch their drive into the sand trap/wooded area/water hazard. Actual competence is kind of boring, except for the bits where somebody launches a 3-iron shot within six inches of the hole.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 9:18 AM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I especially enjoyed the article because recently we were in a bar and a big group of golf bros came in. They were exactly the kind of people the article describes, loud and drinking like they were trying to hurt themselves. Their conversation (which we had no choice but to listen to, did I mention loud?) was a funny mix of arcane golf details and super brotastic high school jock trash talk.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:54 PM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I find it interesting that both this article and another that it links to both contrast the atmosphere in Phoenix with decorum of the Masters. (Fun fact: people who attend the Masters aren't "fans", they are "patrons", and they don't have "tickets", they have "credentials". At least according to the Augusta National.) But the atmosphere just outside the gates is pretty much the same. Up and down Washington Road (the major thoroughfare that runs by the course) there are vendors selling sunglasses, t-shirts, and assorted golf-related stuff, and the bars and restaurants are packed with drunken frat boys of all ages often being loud and obnoxious. Dip Flash describes it pretty well, just imagine it multiplied by 100 in any establishment you enter in that vicinity. And it will be here in a month!
posted by TedW at 5:39 AM on March 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

The first thing to know about the Waste Management Phoenix Open is that the sponsorship and name is a hard troll from the start. Waste Management — the kind of dark, billion-dollar corporate megalith that should absolutely sponsor a golf tournament advertising itself as “green” in the middle of the desert on a golf course — is headquartered in Houston. Its chief competitor, Republic Industries, is a six-minute, 2.9-mile drive away from the tournament’s home at TPC Scottsdale.

That is a beautiful paragraph made even more beautiful to me by the fact that I live in Houston and our complex's waste management company is Republic.
posted by librarylis at 10:59 AM on March 1, 2018 [2 favorites]