The Philadelphia Cricket Club plays host to the newly branded Truist Championship. This is the Wells Fargo Championship, traditionally held at Quail Hollow, which instead gets next week’s PGA Championship. Quail Hollow was commonly a great tune-up for the major season and is a course that demands the best from the field.

I expect the Cricket Club’s Wissahickon to be a great tune-up for Quail Hollow, with a strong emphasis on off-the-tee play and short-iron play. Quail Hollow is always one of the tougher events the pros play in the PGA TOUR rota, and Philly (as we will call it here) has early indications to play hard as well.

An elevated event, we get 72 well-deserving PGA TOUR players with no cut… but we don’t get Scottie.

Plus4: Recap

Scottie burned down TPC Craig Ranch so quickly that we had no need to watch it on the weekend. One of the more dominant wins we will see this decade, and a win that puts Scottie into immaculate form leading into the 2nd major…

Looking at next week at Quail Hollow we trend towards:

1. OWGR #1 Scottie coming into a major off a massive win, when some people may have been thinking his extra gear was gone.
2. #2 Rory off a Masters victory at a course where he has 4 career wins, including his 1st stateside win.
3. #5 Justin Thomas coming in off a win at the RBC Heritage to defend his 2017 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
4. OWGR # (irrelevant) Bryson DeChambeau off a win in Korea with a major stretch that goes 6th, 2nd, 1st, cut, 5th at a course that fits his bomber profile.

But we’ve got an amazing week prior to all that…

Plus4: The Philadelphia Cricket Club (Wissahockon Course)

As we have never seen a professional event here, our approach this week will be different. I am going to “build” a course that I believe should be similar to Philly Cricket. This is the 110% effort you’re getting OUTTA ME ONLY.

I did my own #research on TheGrint, and it feels like every hole has a bunker to carry about ~290 yards (just about TOUR average carry). If you can carry those, many holes can become birdie holes. If you can’t, you bring in a lot of hazards. Carry distance is not something I usually look at, but the rain in the area brings soft conditions and should allow bombers to both carry hazards AND hold fairways. Then will come spin control on many approaches around 150 yards.

This type of build should give us corollary builds, with many guys who seemingly play well at the difficult Northeast courses, and those southern courses that do allow you to overpower it off-the-tee. If you get to a good fairway spot, you create a huge advantage on the field with a short-iron.

The course build I used for this week features:

1. 2 doses of East Lake: East Lake has penal rough and puts a large demand on off-the-tee play for a course that is not outrageously long. And it’s hard.
2. 2 doses of TPC Potomac @ Avenel Farm: More than anything, events here featured deep rough. It does not demand length as much as East Lake, but the rough has been penalizing, and those playing from the rough struggled immensely.
3. 1 dose of Muirfield Village: Jack’s place has a large sample, penal rough, is difficult, and is a course that statistically favors good golfers. Generally, I want to use comp courses here that favor GOOD golfers and produce less randomness.
4. 1 dose of St. George’s Golf & Country Club: A former host of the RBC Canadian, the approach bins of St. George’s alongside penal rough gave me this input.

Looking at stats, our analysis will favor:

1. Carry distance: As stated in #research
2. Putting: All indications show SG: putting will be key as it very difficult to hit close approach shots. This will favor guys who are good from moderate to deep putting distances… another carrot in Muirfield’s bag.
3. 125-175 yards: From my #research, the par 3s here are not long. I suspect the approach bins for those that can survive off-the-tee to be mainly in the 135-175 yard range.

Plus4: The Philadelphia Cricket Club (Wissahockon Course) corollary courses

New here? Visit our Plus4 approach page to learn about our process.

These are the corollary courses from our Frankencourse and will be used in our proprietary course modelling.

1. EAST LAKE
2. MUIRFIELD VILLAGE
3. TPC POTOMAC AT AVENEL FARM
4. KEENE TRACE (CHAMPIONS COURSE)
5. PGA NATIONAL RESORT (THE CHAMPION)
6. WENTWORTH
7. BETHPAGE BLACK
8. FIRESTONE (SOUTH)
9. EMIRATES
10. CORALES
11. CRANS-SUR-SIERRE
12. SHESHAN INTERNATIONAL
13. INNISBROOK RESORT (COPPERHEAD COURSE)
14. TPC CRAIG RANCH
15. QUAIL HOLLOW

Plus4: ‘Players to Watch’ at The Philadelphia Cricket Club (Wissahockon Course)

Ranked by projected skill

1. Rory McIlroy: Comes in off the hottest stretch he’s ever had, and amazing at East Lake, Quail Hollow and St. George’s G&CC. Rightfully the favorite.
2. Xander Schauffele: This is still a markedly soft price for Xander – a player who has done great historically in limited fields, at hard courses, and comes in off a stretch of 12th, 8th and 18th. The lagging skill right now is actually his putting, which is destined to change. Ball speed at RBC Heritage cracked 184mph average, his highest since the rib injury that cost him starts earlier this year.
3. Patrick Cantlay: Cantlay loves this style of course and has great success (similar to Xander) in such events. The ball-striking numbers are back to his standards, and it’d be a fitting victory that adds Cantlay to the list of hot players leading into next week.
4. Shane Lowry: We haven’t seen Lowry win an individual event in the United States in 10 years, since he went to Firestone (a corollary course) for an ole WGC victory. This season he has strung together 7 top 20s in 10 starts but still hasn’t pieced together all 4 key skills in a single event. The irons failed him over the weekend in Augusta, and that looked to cascade into RBC and Zurich. We get Shane a week break to find form at a course that should play to his grinder mentality.
5. Wyndham Clark: Provided Wyndham is healthy, this is an event a course he can shine on. Length required, get hot with short irons, and make putts. That’s the route Wyndham took at Quail Hollow in 2023. The irons have been bad for a few events, but the speed numbers are higher than they’ve been in a calendar year.
6. Denny McCarthy: Once again, Denny McCarthy. As I’ve belabored here, the speed numbers are up to a point where he can contend in events such as this. Good at Quail and Muirfield and someone who could putt this place to death.
7. Taylor Pendrith: Pendrith is a real mixed bag right now with 4 MCs in the past 7 starts. He can’t MC here! In a sample that’s not huge, he plays hard courses well and is long enough to get himself to the ‘easy spots’.
8. Rickie Fowler: Maybe I’m projecting here. The numbers on my board are all green under Rickie’s name. When he was great, he was great at courses such as this. Name a tough, northeast course the PGA TOUR has played and he posted a top-10 at that track. Form is middling but WOW would that be another good story leading to Quail Hollow… where he has a win and 5 top 6s in 12 career starts.
9. Austin Eckroat: I am and have been an Eckroat believer. He has not had the opportunities to play these tough northeast tracks, but they should fit his skillset as a good OTT player with putting upside. I will note, if the irons and/or driver are off, he may find himself in spots where a shotty short-game is exposed. A 2nd or 72nd finish would not shock me.

A look behind the Plus4 model:

Below is a metric I’ve been using, analyzing course history through a normalized and decayed measure. For all players in the field, you can see a breakdown of how players perform at the courses our plus4 analysis deems corollary courses.

Player-by-player corollary course performance, ordered by DraftKings price.

Plus4 Board

Open outright bets:

• Outright, T5 and T10 on Lowry and Pendrith
• T5, T10, T20 on Eckroat, Thorbjornsen, and Higgo

My odds shown below via the datagolf.com Custom Model tool

Favorite Play:
Lowry, Shane ($8.5k)
Star Anchor:
Rory ($12k), X ($10.2k) and Cantlay ($9.5k) are all at price points that are not prohibitive.
Gut Check:
Pendrith, Taylor ($7.1k)
Favorite Sub-$7,000:
Fowler, Rickie ($6.3k)

One & Done: Lowry

My player pool this week is very tight, with good concentration around Rory, X and Cantlay and then dropping ownership towards JT.

Very overweight

1. McIlroy, Rory ($12k)
2. Schauffele, Xander ($10.2k)
3. Cantlay, Patrick ($9.5k)
4. Thomas, Justin ($10k)
5. Lowry, Shane ($8.5k)
6. Hovland, Viktor ($9.1k)
7. Clark, Wyndham ($7.9k)
8. McCarthy, Denny ($7.8k)
9. Pendrith, Taylor ($7.1k)
10. Fowler, Rickie ($6.3k)
11. Eckroat, Austin ($6.1k)

Mid-range fillers

1. Bradley, Keegan ($8.1k)
2. Rose, Justin ($7.6k)
3. An, Byeong Hun ($7.3k)

Under $7.0k

1. Thorbjornsen, Michael ($6.4k)
2. Higgo, Garrick ($6.1k)
3. Highsmith, Joe ($6.1k)
4. Greyserman, Max ($6.6k)

FOMO

1. Straka, Sepp ($8.7k)
2. Finau, Tony ($7.4k)

As always, GL GL GL.