Why Players Are Fighting It Out For A Cricket Bat Trophy On The PGA Tour This Week

The Truist Championship is possibly the most intriguing event on the PGA Tour this season, with a handful of fresh details for fans to sink their teeth into.

Firstly, there's the name of the tournament and its headline sponsor. What was previously the Wells Fargo Championship has been replaced by Truist, a financial corporation based out of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Truist has agreed a sponsorship deal with the PGA Tour, worth $200 million, which stretches until 2032 at the earliest and will see the business back the event once it returns to Quail Hollow from 2026.

Then there is this year's tournament location, The Philadelphia Cricket Club. The USA's oldest country club is standing in for 2025 as Quail Hollow prepares to host the PGA Championship next week.

Founded on February 10, 1854, Philadelphia CC was formed by a group of students with English heritage who were attending the University of Pennsylvania. Cricketers themselves, the men wanted to continue playing the game after graduating, so they set up The Philadelphia Cricket Club with William Roach Wistar at the forefront.

The club - whose first President was J. Dickerson Sergeant - wanted to practice and play both cricket and tennis for the health benefits the two sports would provide to its members. It has gone on to serve as host for several more sports, including squash, swimming and trap shooting.

But with no home to base themselves out of, the men roamed around for almost 30 years playing cricket until a plot of land in Chestnut Hill, PA was provided by a generous benefactor called Henry H. Houston in 1883.

It was there that the first of three golf courses was built - each one opened in consecutive centuries and therefore the only club in the US with this distinction. The St Martins course was originally constructed in 1895 as a nine-hole course before being extended to 18 holes two years later. Since then, it has hosted two US Opens (1907 & 1910) and been returned to a nine-hole course again.

The second course built by The Philadelphia Cricket Club was the Wissahickon Course - the site of this year's Truist Championship - around 10 minutes away from Chestnut Hill.

Located in Whitemarsh Township, near Flourtown, and opened in 1922, the Wissahickon Course was designed by the same man who laid out Bethpage Black, Baltusrol and Winged Foot - A.W. Tillinghast.

With plenty of leftover land, a third course was designed by Michael J. Hurdzan and Dana Fry and opened in 2002 - Militia Hill.

Until a complete restoration in 2014, the Wissahickon had barely been touched. Since work was carried out on it, the Flourtown layout has hosted the Philadelphia Open, the Senior Players Championship and the US Amateur Four-Ball.

However, one significant difference to normal for the 2025 Truist Championship pertains to the course layout. First introduced for the 2016 Senior Players Championship, a completely different routing to the one members play will again be used.

When hosting what is now called the Kaulig Companies Championship, officials decided the regular route would not work logistically for a professional tournament with a lack of space in key areas.

Therefore, at that event and once more in the 2025 Truist Championship, the first hole will actually be the eighth and the "18th hole" will in fact be the fourth. The new routing will go as follows: 8-18, 1-3, 7, 5, 6, 4. It will play as a 7,119-yard par-70 this week.

Whoever comes out on top will hoist the cricket-bat trophy above their head - a design in honor of the club's origins. The Philadelphia cricket team was originally disbanded in 1924 but later revived in 1998 as the sport's popularity began to grow in the States once more.

A year after part of the Men's Twenty20 Cricket World Cup was played in the US, the sport will enjoy another week in the spotlight courtesy of the PGA Tour.