Next up is the Truist Championship in Flourtown, Pennsylvania. It is a signature event and many of the world’s top golfers will be playing as they prepare for the 2nd Major of the PGA Season the following week.

This tournament was formerly the Wells Fargo and was played at Quail Hollow but it’s now the Truist Championship and will be played at the Wissahickon Course at the Philadelphia Cricket Club. Quail Hollow will be the host the PGA Championship next week.

The Wissahickon Course was designed by A.W. Tillinghast and was completed in 1922. Tillinhast was a renowned golf course architect with his most popular courses being Winged Foot and Bethpage Black. It was most recently renovated in 2013 by Kevin Foster. During the renovation they redid the greens, tees, fairways, bunkers and installed a new irrigation system. They also cut down hundreds of trees, returning closer to its original design.

The Course hosted the Champions Tour in 2016, when Bernhard Langer won the Senior Players Championship at 1 over par. Obviously the caliber of golfer and advancements in equipment nearly a decade later aren’t comparable but it’s definitely noteworthy that the course played so difficult in a professional setting.

The Wissahickon Course is a 7,112 yard Par 70 with Bentgrass greens. There will be some rerouting from the traditional hole setup for the tournament. It’s looks as though they tournament will start on hole 8 and then go to hole nine then the back nine of the traditional setup. Hole 4 and 7 on the traditional setup will be swapped to play as the 15th and 18th holes.

There are 12 par fours, four par threes and two par fives. Based on the scorecard provided by the PGA Tour there are two par fours 350-400 yards, seven from 400-450 yards, two from 450-500 yards and the closing 18th hole will play slightly over 500 yards.

There are two shorter par threes with the 3rd hole playing 172 yards and the 14th hole only playing 122 yards. The other two par threes are 240 and 215 yards.

The par fives will obviously play as the easiest holes on the course and will have to be taken advantage of considering there are only two of them. The 5th hole will play 546 yards and the 15th hole will be 553 yards. The 15th which generally plays as the 7th hole for members is home of “the Great Hazard” which is a cluster of 13 bunkers and long grass in the middle of the fairway.

There are many wide open views from tee boxes but the vast amount of bunkers can quickly make driving strategy feel quite claustrophobic. There are 118 bunkers on the course totalling 104,000 square feet.

The fairways and landing areas are on the wider side but golfers will need to employ some strategy off the tee with many sloping fairways. Tee shots could run off or golfers may be left with awkward lies for their second shot. The strategy of setting up the 2nd shot goes a long way to finding the correct angle to these elevated greens and to avoid the surrounding bunkers.

Given the length of the course and the emphasis on strategy, we could see many golfers choose to go less than driver on some holes. Golfers with some distance off the tee could take some bunkers out of play and some fairways get wider the further you can hit. Depending on the rough length it could make 2nd shots difficult for golfers who miss the fairways. However the fact that most golfers hitting wedges or mid irons mitigate the difficulty of missed fairways.

On approach shots, golfers will hit to elevated greens with an upside down bowl shape and heavy undulations. The yardage of many holes seems to put an emphasis on mid irons and wedges this week. Pin placement will be important this week and golfers will need to hit to the right spot to avoid too much roll out on these undulating greens. I’ll be looking at opportunities gained this week. Not because I think guys should fire at pins but more so because hitting irons to your target will be very important this week.

Most greens are surrounded by deep penal bunkers. Golfers that miss the green this week will likely have to rely much more on sand saves than traditional chip shots when scrambling.

Overall it looks like the course will test golfers’ strategy off the tee, their ability to hit correct spots on approach and scramble when necessary. It’s hard to project a winning score this week but it’s likely going to play on the more difficult side especially if the rough is grown out. I could see the winner somewhere around 15 under.

There are 72 golfers in the field and there is NO CUT

Key Stats

• Approach
• Good Drives Gained
• Opportunities Gained
• Sand Saves/Scrambling