The PGA TOUR is in Flourtown, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia, this week for another Signature Event. This week’s tournament will take place on the Wissahickon Course of the Philadelphia Cricket Club. If you’re not familiar with this event or this course, don’t feel bad–it’s a new name and a new course. Let’s take a look at the history of the event, the format of the Signature event, and the course we’ll get our first look at on the PGA TOUR this week.
The history of the event
The Truist Championship isn’t a brand-new event, but it is a new name. From 2011 to 2024, the tournament was called the Quail Hollow Championship. The name change is extra confusing this year since the event isn’t taking place at Quail Hollow Club, since that course is hosting the PGA Championship next week.
Quail Hollow is always a tough test for the top pros, and it has had big names typically emerge with the win. Rory McIlroy has won this event four times since 2010, while other winners include Rickie Fowler, Brian Harman, Jason Day, Wyndham Clark and Max Homa (twice).
Rory is the defending champion at this event and the clear favorite after his win at the Masters less than a month ago. He’ll also be in a great spot at Quail Hollow next week since he has so much great course history on that track.
Before we get to that, though, he’ll defend his titlat at this week’s Signature Event. As a Signature Event, the tournament has an elevated purse with a total of $20 million ready to be claimed this weekend. The winner will earn $3.6 million of that purse for the third straight year, and they’ll also add 700 FedExCup points to their total.
The field this week is extremely strong with almost all the top players on the PGA TOUR planning to play. The one glaring absence is Scottie Scheffler, who opted to play last week at THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson in his home state of Texas instead. Billy Horschel is the only other qualified player not teeing it up this week. The 72-player field will not have a cut, so all 72 players will complete four rounds, barring disqualification or withdrawal.
A closer look at the course
Calling this course “new” is actually pretty inaccurate, although it is new to the PGA TOUR. The Philadelphia Cricket Club is the oldest country club in the United States, and the Wissahickon Course originally opened in 1922–not new by most standards.
This was famous golf course architect A.W. Tillinghast’s home club of choice, and it recently cracked the top 100 courses in the United States as listed by Golf Magazine. The course underwent a major restoration in 2013 led by Keith Foster.
The par 70 course layout this week will play at about 7,100 yards. It’s designed to prevent length off the tee from overpowering it, though, with undulating greens, strategic bunkering, and challenging approach shots due to changes in elevation and terrain.
While it only features two par 5s, the first of the course’s two signature holes is the par 5 15th, which features the “Great Hazard.” That label refers to the huge central bunker that bisects the fairway. The other signature hole comes on the finishing hole, which is a tough risk-reward hole with a creek that hugs the left side of the fairway off the tee and could provide drama at the finish on Sunday.
While it has not hosted a PGA TOUR event before, here’s a course overview that gives a good idea of what we’ll see this week:
The PGA TOUR also put out a drone flyover of the course that you can check out on their main website, along with five things to know about the course.
While there is a little more guesswork and projections than where we have a lot of history, the key metrics that should result in success this week include Strokes Gained: Approach, Total Driving, Strokes Gained: Putting (Bentgrass), Par 4 Birdie or Better rate, Sand Saves, and Bogey Avoidance.
