Will the Truist Championship help land the Philadelphia area more PGA Tour events?

Consider this an audition of sorts, and also a plea.

Around here, Philadelphia Cricket Club needs no introduction. But in early May it will, for four-plus days, have a national audience when the best golfers on the PGA Tour descend on the area for one of the tour’s signature events, the Truist Championship. There is inherent pressure for any club to put on such an event, and you can add on a little more considering what Cricket’s director of golf, Jim Smith Jr., and other local officials are hoping comes out of this.

The Truist, formerly the Wells Fargo Championship, is just stopping by, in a sense. Its normal site, Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C., is hosting the 2025 PGA Championship a week after the Truist, which will return to Charlotte next year.

While the Philadelphia area is home to next year’s PGA Championship, at Aronimink, it continues to lack a regular stop on the tour despite numerous great golf courses and its rich golf history.

Sure, Merion has hosted five U.S. Opens since 1934 and is on the calendar again in 2030. Wilmington hosted a playoff event in 2022. Aronimink had Tiger Woods’ AT&T National and again will be in the spotlight next season. But those in the local golf scene want more.

“For many, many years I think there was a little bit of an inferiority complex in Philadelphia, that we were stuck between Boston, New York, D.C. and that maybe we were overlooked,” Smith, a Jenkintown native, said Thursday morning at the Flourtown club. “I think what we’re seeing now is that we’re not inferior as a city and an area, especially as it relates to supporting events like this. I think this has far exceeded what anybody thought would happen and I think this is going to hopefully lay the groundwork for regular tour events or large events coming to Philadelphia.

“It’s not just Cricket and Aronimink and the Pine Valley and Merions of the world. There are 20 other phenomenal golf courses in our city, all of which could probably host an event at some point.”

What has to change for more events to come? It’s more than the famous “build it, he will come” line from Field of Dreams. The grandstands and hospitality suites are built. Tickets for Saturday’s third round are sold out. Friday will soon be maxed out, too. The Wissahickon Course, a design from legendary architect A.W. Tillinghast, sprouted up in the 1920s. There’s more to it.

“At the end of the day, this is about money,” Smith said. “They can’t go to places if they can’t drive revenue and can’t pay the tour, can’t have the purse sizes. We just have to validate that the money is in the city, and I think they’re seeing that with us, and I know Aronimink is killing it with the PGA sales. Back-to-back years, you’d think maybe there’s a watering down. Maybe we don’t get as much because of Aronimink, and Aronimink doesn’t get that much because of us. We’re both killing it, and I think that’s going to tell the world of golf that, hey, Philadelphia is really a market that might deserve more.”

» READ MORE: PGA Tour’s Wells Fargo Championship is now the Truist Championship — and it’s coming to the Philly area in 2025

Joie Chitwood, the executive director of the event, spoke Thursday about some of the Philly flair the event will have, especially the food, like the Gazzos cheesesteaks, Hangry Bear ice cream, and Federal Donuts & Chicken. Chitwood and Smith also discussed all that has gone into this.

Smith said the phone rang in January 2024, and he originally thought event planners were just kicking the tires. By February a site visit was scheduled, and negotiations started in March. The contract was signed in July. Chitwood was named executive director the following month, and then the work began. Corporate partnerships and ticket sales. Corralling local clubs to fill out volunteer lists, which proved to be no issue, considering there’s a waiting list. All of it has come together smoothly for a place that has hosted its share of big events, most recently last year’s U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship.

“We couldn’t ask for more energy or enthusiasm from the market,” Chitwood said. “It also tells us this is the market to be in, in terms of sports craziness, energy, a club, an event, a partner like Truist. Those are the recipes that make truly successful things happen.”

» READ MORE: Plan by Aronimink to cut down trees for PGA Tour draws some opposition

The fan experience will be intimate. Normally, Smith said, a signature event on the PGA Tour averages around 20,000 to 25,000 spectators per day. The crowd at Cricket will be capped at 17,500, and there’s an extended stretch of the course that won’t have structures impeding sightlines.

“It might be the best viewing of a golf tournament that anyone’s ever gotten,” Smith said.

As for the golf itself, the course isn’t undergoing dramatic changes ahead of the first round on May 8, although it has been rerouted little. The eighth hole, given its proximity to the practice range, is the first hole. Golfers then will play the course in its normal order all the way around through the third hole. But the closing four holes, in order, are the normal seventh, fifth, sixth, and fourth holes. The new route will have tour players needing to take advantage of the par-5 15th to prepare for a tough final three holes.

When Cricket hosted the Constellation Senior Players Championship in 2016, those final three holes — a par 3 over water followed by two difficult par 4s — proved to be the hardest.

Bernhard Langer won that event at 1-over par. May’s champion will surely beat that mark, Smith said. The Truist will bring to Cricket some of the best players in the world. Rory McIlroy won last year’s event at Quail Hollow. Smith predicts the course-record 65 will be in jeopardy every day for what likely will end up being a par-70, 7,100-yard track.

“All you want,” he said, “is the players to leave and go: ‘What a great city, what a great golf course, what great hospitality.’ That’s the goal.”

And, they hope, the groundwork.