Philadelphia Cricket Club provided a brilliant change of pace on the PGA Tour, with the course hosting the Truist Championship for the first time this past week.
With Quail Hollow hosting the PGA Championship in the coming days, the Truist Championship required a different venue this year. When the North Carolina course previously hosted the PGA Championship in 2017, it was Eagle Point which stepped in to stage the PGA Tour event.
Quail Hollow suits the longer hitters, with Rory McIlroy winning there four times previously. But that was not the case with Philadelphia Cricket Club, which asked some very different questions.
It was notable that Sepp Straka and Shane Lowry are far from being the longest hitters on the PGA Tour, yet for much of Sunday, it appeared that it was going to come down to the two men to decide the winner of the Truist Championship.
Smylie Kaufman issues his verdict on Philadelphia Cricket Club hosting a signature event on the PGA Tour
It made a nice change from some of the more monotonous courses on the PGA Tour schedule. Few are going to remember TPC Louisiana and TPC Craig Ranch particularly fondly.
Some would probably now love to see Philadelphia Cricket Club feature more often on the calendar. But speaking on The Smylie Show, Smylie Kaufman explained the issues the course had over the last week in hosting a signature event.
“The Philly fans were great. Not as many fans as I thought there would be for this event. But it turns out they’re limited to, I think it was 17,500 every day which is a little light. That’s mainly just trying to get people around the golf course,” he said.
“I would say it wasn’t a very good spectating golf course because everything’s so bottled up, all these holes are running right next to each other. There were a few holes where all of the fans basically would gather. There were holes, like the 14th hole, that par three that’s 91 yards – there was no good vantage point unless you were in the suites left, because the cart path runs way below the green surface. Even the third hole, you couldn’t even get over to it until the other side of the third hole by the fourth tee [was clear]. So I didn’t think it was necessarily the best spectating golf course.
“A golf course that you would love to play, but not as many people as I was hoping that there could have been out there – and I think that was much more of a venue deal, just trying to make sure, you don’t want to overcrowd a place, and just making sure that you can get people around.”
What Rory McIlroy thought of the Philadelphia Cricket Club
The weather did appear to help defend the course as the week went on. But it really did seem to provide quite a stern test, with very few players able to keep the bogeys off the card across the week.
You would imagine that plenty of players would grow more tired of the course if it became a regular fixture on the schedule. However, it did seem that they embraced the challenge.
And ahead of the tournament, Rory McIlroy explained what he thought of the layout.
“I played the back nine yesterday. I played the front nine today. It’s very similar to a lot of these old school courses that have been renovated over the past few years. A lot of trees have been taken out. The green complexes are, for me, the interesting thing about the golf course,” he said.
“It sort of to me feels like a smaller version of Oak Hill, not a lot of strategy off the tee because there’s no real hazards. There’s some fairway bunkers, but if you avoid those, the rough’s not that long so it’s not a huge penalty.
“A little simple off the tee, I guess, is the best way to describe it, but making sure with the second shots that you’re below the hole and trying to get to learn the greens a little bit more. Yeah, sort of a smaller, shorter version of Oak Hill is sort of how I see the course.”
At the very least, the Truist Championship seems to have strengthened the calls for the PGA Tour to look at some of the venues they go to regularly, with so many interesting parts of the country currently overlooked.
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