When the PGA TOUR sets up shop in Philadelphia for this week’s Truist Championship, the Signature Event will occupy sacred golf ground.

Yet it’s also new ground, as The Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Wissahickon Course will host the PGA TOUR for the first time. It also marks the TOUR’s first trip to Philadelphia since the 2018 BMW Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, won by Keegan Bradley.

Here’s all you need to know about the 1922 A.W. Tillinghast design that takes center stage for this week’s Truist Championship.

History

The Philadelphia Cricket Club, founded in 1854, is the only club in the United States that can claim three 18-hole golf courses from three different centuries. The original layout, evolved from 1895 to 1897 and called the St. Martins Course, is in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, eight miles northwest of the city center. It was highly regarded in its heyday, enough to hold U.S. Opens in 1907 (won by Alec Ross, Donald Ross’ older brother) and again in 1910 (won by Alex Smith). Today it is preserved as a vintage nine-hole, period-piece layout evoking the golf standards of its day and shares ground with the club’s extensive racquet, pool and sports field amenities.

In 1922, the club opened its Wissahickon Course, designed by A.W. Tillinghast, on a (then) remote 321-acre parcel four miles further northwest of town in the adjoining suburb of Flourtown. This will be the site of the Truist Championship.

There was enough unused land on that Flourtown site for a third course, Militia Hill, designed by Michael J. Hurdzan and Dana Fry and opened in 2002.

The Wissahickon Course has hosted the 2015 PGA Professional National Championship (won by Matt Dobyns), PGA TOUR Champions’ 2016 Kaulig Companies Championship (won by Bernhard Langer) and the 2024 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship (won by Brian Blanchard and Sam Engel).

Tillinghast and the Philadelphia School of Architecture

Wissahickon Course designer Albert Warren Tillinghast (1874-1942) was a native Philadelphian and a colorful, productive figure in the “Golden Age of Golf Course Architecture.” He undertook golf trips to Scotland in the 1890s, where he met, among others, Old Tom Morris. He was a good enough golfer to compete in multiple U.S. Opens but ultimately transitioned into golf design, where he applied the lessons of linksland golf to such legendary inland sites as San Francisco Golf Club, Baltimore Country Club East Course, Winged Foot Golf Club and Baltusrol Golf Club.

A keen writer and golf editorialist with strong opinions, Tillinghast made his mark on design through distinctive greens, dramatic greenside bunkering, and a penchant for such trademark holes as the drop-shot par 3 (Wissahickon’s 14th) and the mid-fairway “Great Hazard” at a par 5 (Wissahickon’s 15th).

Tillinghast was a golf partner and occasional advisor to such native Philadelphia design innovators as Hugh Wilson, George A. Crump, William Flynn and George C. Thomas. Their cultivation of a heathland look and adaptation of links features to sandy sites (including Pine Valley Golf Club) formed one of the more influential design trends that comprised the “Golden Age” in the period between the two world wars.

For all his success as a golf architect, Tillinghast fell victim to the Great Depression and a series of failed investments that nearly bankrupted him, and he moved in with a daughter in his final years. Today, his artistic genius is enshrined through his status as a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Keith Foster’s restoration

Veteran course designer Keith Foster has increasingly focused his practice on restoration. Among his other Tillinghast reclamations are Sand Point Golf Club on Long Island, Baltimore Country Club - Five Farms, and Brook Hollow Golf Club in Dallas.

At Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Wissahickon Course from 2012-14, Foster faced an intact original routing but one that had been heavily overgrown with trees planted in the post-World War II era. The layout’s original strategic width had been lost to narrow holes threaded through dense overhanging tree corridors. Greens had shrunk, with the subsequent loss of hole locations tucked into corners or immediately adjacent to looming bunkers. An aging irrigation system needed replacement. Dense rough, not tightly mowed short grass, surrounded the putting surfaces, such that greenside recovery was reduced to a lob wedge rather than providing players with the option to pitch, bump or putt back to the hole.

A total rebuild during the summer of 2013 fixed that. The restoration entailed extensive tree management, a complete rebuild of all greens, enhanced drainage, introduction of a more consistently manageable bentgrass on tees and fairways – and most of all, meticulous attention to Tillinghast’s original scheme for bunkering. Instead of simply playing golf down the middle, golfers now had to tack their way around the offset placement of hazards. The course simultaneously got longer at the back and shorter up front, providing greater equity and enjoyment for players of all skill levels. The innovative restoration drew industry-wide praise and became a model for what has since become standard: total restoration rebuilds.

Foster’s restoration enhanced many distinct aspects of Tillinghast’s course. They include side-by-side par 3s running in opposite directions (third and 14th holes); a greenside bunker on the par-4 13th with a corner of the locker room building touching upon the hazard; an elevated railway line coming into play on the slice side of two long par 4s (fourth and 17th); and vast tracts of wavy, tawny fescue grass on the outside of holes to provide a native textural framing.

Championship re-routing

For the 2016 Kaulig Companies Championship (then known as the Constellation SENIOR PLAYERS Championship), officials determined there was not enough room behind the green and near the clubhouse for spectator stands and corporate suites. Since players would have to be shuttled to the range (and back) if the club’s normal hole sequence was retained, a move was made to start and end the routing in the middle of the property, close to the range. This offered vast room for spectator stands and tournament infrastructure.

That routing, starting on the members’ eighth hole and ending on the fourth, created the routing that will be used for the Truist Championship: Nos. 8-18, 1-3, 7-5-6-4. It sounds confusing but works well on the ground, with short green-to-tee walks and a crescendo of a golf course that starts with back-to-back par 4s and builds to a “hold on for dear life” finish

Final four

The dramatic finish at the Wissahickon Course is actually set up by a vexing little par 3, the 14th hole, only 122 yards to the most tightly bunkered green on the course. From there, it’s as if the grounds suddenly open up and all hell breaks loose.

No. 15, 553 yards, par 5: A three-quarter-acre complex of bunkers and mounds – Tillinghast’s “Great Hazard” – fills up the fairway, 335 yards off the tee. It will be a factor for the very longest hitters playing downwind; otherwise, it only comes into play for those who have badly missed the fairway off the tee and pitch out. The green here, among the smallest on the course, is well defended up front and on both sides with sand, to the point where players must hit their long or mid-iron on a high trajectory. This is the last good birdie opportunity in the round.

No. 16, 215 yards, par 3: Slightly downhill, to a green protected up front by a tiny stream. The putting surface here, according to The Philadelphia Cricket Club Director of Golf Jim Smith Jr., “Doesn't offer a flat putt anywhere, least of all inside 5 feet.”

No. 17, 498 yards, par 4: A slightly elevated railway line down the entire right side of the hole looms as an ominous obstacle and subliminally leads players to favor the left side on the drive and approach shot.

No. 18, 517 yards, par 4: The narrowest landing area off the tee on the course thanks to three flanking fairway bunkers and a green whose entrance is pinched on both sides by sand. When Langer won the 2016 Kaulig Companies Championship in windy conditions, he had to pitch out from a fairway bunker and ultimately made a difficult 10-footer for par for a one-stroke victory over Joe Durant and Miguel Angel Jiménez.

Back in 2016, the average driving distance on PGA TOUR Champions was 275 yards. On the 2025 PGA TOUR through April 25, the average drive is 300 yards. While the Wissahickon Course is only 101 yards longer now from 2016, the Truist Championship competitors will have gained on average, 350 yards (25 yards x 14 drives). How will the course hold up – even those last four holes?

“The greens,” Smith said. “It’s all in the greens. There isn’t a straight putt to be found, especially if the greens are running at Stimpmeter speeds of 12-plus.”

Card of the course

The Philadelphia Cricket Club – Wissahickon Course

Slope: 140
Rating: 74.8