Koepka, Fowler embrace TPC Scottsdale’s raucous par-3 16th

You talk a short walk from the 15th green into a walkway under the stands. You weave your way through a tunnel of green. The modest hum of thousands of fans, anticipating your arrival, can’t be ignored.

Then then catch you walking onto what is, for 50 weeks each year, a benign par 3. Not this week, though.

For the Waste Management Phoenix Open, the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale is way more than a golf hole. It’s a party. It’s the watering hole of choice. It’s a stadium where 30,000-plus people go to see and be seen.

So, do the world’s best players who are trying to compete amid that crazy atmosphere treat it any differently than a sleepy one-shotter elsewhere on the PGA Tour?

Not really.

“I don’t do anything differently. I don’t feel like I need to,” said Rickie Fowler on Tuesday. “I love this event, and I definitely, like you said, embrace the crowd, the atmosphere.”

Keep in mind, this is the same place where the crowd will boo heavily if a player misses the green. Doesn’t matter who they are. But, Fowler prefers to think about the flip side.

“You can definitely use it to your advantage if you’re playing well and kind of feed off the crowd’s energy.”

Brooks Koepka handled it just fine last year. He’s the defending champion. He wants to treat the 16th like anywhere else on the par-71 track.

“I just keep it the same,” he said. “I’m just pretty chill. It doesn’t matter to me whether they are hooting or hollering on 16. 16, I love. You don’t get that that much out here, and if you can — it’s one time a year.”

And, like Fowler, he uses it as motivation to show off his skills.

“You’re looking forward to it,” he said. “You need to hit a good shot on that hole.”

However, Koepka did admit that his first time in the stadium-like atmosphere blew away his expectations.

“When you first see it, you’re like, Wow, it’s big,” he said. “You have this picture in your mind, like, okay, this amphitheater, it’s big and you realize how many people are in it. You’re like, Whoa. Four, five times bigger than I thought it was.”

Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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