AT first, second, and maybe even third glance, this week’s Truist Championship is somewhat discombobulating. Everything about it is not quite as you feel it ought to be.
First, there is the tournament sponsor, which used to be Wells Fargo. Then there is the course, which is not the usual Quail Hollow Club in North Carolina because that hosts next week’s PGA Championship. Instead, we’re in Pennsylvania on the wonderfully named Wissahickon Course at the highly unlikely-sounding Philadelphia Cricket Club.
Rather surprisingly, it’s the oldest golf club in the United States, and the layout was designed by AW Tillinghast, who was also responsible for Bethpage Black, Winged Foot, and Baltusrol, which suggests that we’re set for a major championship-style test ahead of next week’s PGA Championship.
Rory McIlroy defends the title following his five shot victory over Xander Schauffele last year, and, while it’s important, in reality it is the least of McIlroy’s reasons to be feeling chipper at the moment after his sensational triumph in the Masters last month.
Imagine what a wonderful sense of relief must have been coursing through his veins since slipping his arms inside that new green jacket. Because it was not only a much-longed-for first win in a tournament he described as “the best in the world”, it was not just completion of the full set of major championships; it was also his first victory in any of them since 2014. So, in completing one highly desirable Grand Slam, he was also saying a very fond farewell to a Triple Crown of misery.
The many, often convoluted, ways in which he failed to get over the line in the Masters must have tried his patience to the limit. He nearly won it, he missed cuts; he attacked; he defended; he spoke fluently about his quest; he avoided the media and kept schtum; he pretended he didn’t care; he read the Stoics. There’s something about the entire enterprise that resembles the desperate efforts of the plucky hero in a prisoner of war escape movie. The golfing equivalents, at least, of dressing as a guard, hiding in a Red Cross tea chest, and having a man in broken spectacles forge a Dutch passport.
Remember 2011? He was free, miles from his captors, when he took a wrong turn and ended up in a cabin whose occupants betrayed him. A year later he was bang in the hunt again at halfway. Essentially, the tunnel he’d been digging had passed beneath the barbed wire and beyond, but when he popped his head out the guard’s spotlight was straight on him.
Just like one of those movie heroes, when he wasn’t failing himself, he was having to face the agony of other prisoners with ill-equipped or poorly planned escapes, managing to not only flee the camp but actually complete a home run. And in 2018 there was the indignity of being forced by the Escape Officer to make a bold bid for freedom (play in the final group of the final round) with a cocky American (Patrick Reed). And wouldn’t you know it? The Yank got away while our hero was frogmarched back into camp and thrown into solitary confinement.
His every effort tormented him. Every return to Amen Corner was as if he was handing over his passport to an enemy investigator and desperately trying to pass himself off as the real thing. A simple “good luck” caught him out every time.
But now he’s free! He’ll be looking for more major glory next week, but first there is this week and the possibility of a fifth triumph in the tournament. He has an excellent chance, but with grander opportunities on the horizon we’ll look elsewhere with the tips.
Jason Day
Bryson DeChambeau won his first US Open at Winged Foot and he had Tillinghast form because he’d won another of his designs, Ridgewood, in the 2018 Northern Trust event. We’ll take the hint and back a Tillinghast specialist in the shape of Jason Day. He’s finished second at Baltusrol, second and fifth at Ridgewood, fourth at Bethpage Black, and, in all, he’s 9-for-9 at finishing top 40 with seven top 25s. He also spent all week in the top 10 when eighth at the Masters last month.
Lucas Glover
Lucas Glover has played some nice golf this year, notably when third in both the Players Championship and AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and eighth in the Valspar Championship. He won his US Open title at Bethpage back in 2009 and he was also T16 there in the 2019 PGA Championship. He then added T17 in the US Open at Winged Foot in 2020. This could be a week when the long game matters more than putting, and that would suit Glover nicely.
Justin Thomas
We’ll finish with a shorter price saver and take Justin Thomas to play freely after his victory last month in the RBC Heritage. It was a first triumph anywhere since he won the 2022 PGA Championship and will have lifted a weight from his shoulders. He’s played four times on Tillinghast designs and landed three top 10s (T10 at Bethpage, T8 at Ridgewood, T8 at Winged Foot).
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