Why is this week’s PGA Tour event being played at a cricket club?

Philadelphia Cricket Club will host the 2025 Truist Championship on the PGA Tour.

With the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow later this month, the Truist Championship will spend a year at Philadelphia Cricket Club. But why is it called that?

Golf Club. Golf & Country Club. The something Club. All suffixes with which we’re familiar when scoping out the venue of an upcoming tour event. So if, like us, you’re wondering why this week’s Truist Championship is being played at Philadelphia Cricket Club, then you’re in the right place.

First of all, we know a lot of you reading this will be American and therefore may not even know what cricket is.

The closest comparison, perhaps, is baseball, in that it is a bat and ball sport with a batting team and a fielding team and they run around the pitch to score runs.

Generally that’s where the similarities end. In a bid to not drag this out, here’s the most basic explanation…

Cricket is played by two teams of 11 players on a large oval-shaped field with a rectangle pitch carved into the middle with three small wooden posts – called wickets – at each end.

The aim of the game is simple: score more runs than your opponents without all your batters – or batsmen, as they’re known in cricket – getting out.

Runs can be scored by hitting the ball into the field and running between the wickets, or over the boundary line. (A bit like a home run, really.)

Obviously, like all sports, it is way more complex than just three paragraphs, but I feel like I’m losing some of you already, so here’s a short YouTube video if you genuinely want to learn more about the second most popular sport on the planet.

Enjoyed by almost 3 billion people around the world – mainly in the UK, Asia, Caribbean, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand – only soccer is played by more people around the globe.

Right, so why is a golf tournament being played at a cricket club?

Fun fact: Cricket was the first organized sport played at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid 19th century.

So when one particular group of Penn students wanted to continue playing together following graduation, they decided to make it official. And so, on February 10, 1854, Philadelphia Cricket Club – the world’s first country club – was born.

The purpose of the club, according to its website, was “the practicing and playing of the games of cricket and tennis and the promotion of the health of its members”.

For the first 30 years, the club would play matches on any grounds available to them. Then, in 1883, and thanks to a generous land donation from benefactor Henry H. Houston, they had their first home in Chestnut Hill in the northern suburbs of the City of Brotherly Love.

While cricket was not played at the club between the 1920s until its revival in the ‘90s, it kept the sport in its name as a reminder of its origins.

When did golf arrive at Philadelphia Cricket Club?

Today, there are three golf courses at Philly Cricket – as the club is affectionately known. The original nine-hole course – St Martins, named after a nearby church – was built in 1895 by renowned architect Willie Tucker and replaced by an 18-hole layout just two years later.

The course hosted the US Open in 1907 and 1910, which were won by Alec Ross and Alex Smith respectively.

Also during the 1907 tournament was the first ever hole-in-one in a US Open, recorded by Jack Hobens, who would go on to finish in 4th place.

The most famous name linked to Philadelphia Cricket Club was Willie Anderson – the Scotland-born four-time US Open champion who, to this day, remains the only player to successfully defend the title twice in a row.

In 1920, Philly Cricket bought another patch of land in nearby Flourtown and the Wissahickon course – designed by AW Tillinghast of Bethpage Black, Baltusrol and Winged Foot fame – opened two years later. As well as the PGA Tour’s Truist Championship this year, the Wissahickon also hosted the 2016 Senior Players Championship, which was won by two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer.

Then, in 1999, a third course – Militia Hill, by Dr Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry – was commissioned and that opened for play in 2002, also on the Flourtown site.

That year, Philadelphia Cricket Club became the only club to open an 18-hole golf course in three different centuries – though the St Martins layout has since reverted to its original nine-hole status.

Other sports played at Philadelphia Cricket Club

Along with cricket and golf, tennis was the main sport played by members.

The club hosted the first US Women’s Singles Championship in 1887, the first Women’s National Doubles Tournament in 1889, and the first National Mixed Doubles Tournament in 1892. All of those tournaments, of course, are now known as the US Open and played on the same site in New York over a fortnight each September.

The club’s most famous member was Richard Norris Williams II, who survived the Titanic disaster in April 1912. Williams’ legs were so severely frostbitten by the ordeal that doctors aboard rescue ship Carpathia wanted to amputate them.

Not wanting to cut short his promising tennis career, Williams refused, and later that year won his first US Open title in the mixed doubles. He would go on to win the US Open singles in 1914 and 1916, as well as the Wimbledon doubles in 1920 and US Open doubles in 1925 and ’26.

Williams also won gold at the 1924 Paris Olympics in the mixed doubles, as well as the Davis Cup in 1925 and ’26.

As well as the tennis courts, cricket pitch and St Martins golf course, Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Chestnut Hill site also has squash facilities, padel courts, and an eight-lane, 25-meter swimming pool.  

The club remains a regular host of the annual Philadelphia International Cricket Festival.