Rory McIlroy sees 1 truth in harsh conditions at golden-age course

FLOURTOWN, Pa. — Rory McIlroy blasted driver all over a Golden Age course on Thursday at the 2025 Truist Championship. For McIlroy and much of the Signature Event field, it was a driver-wedge fest at the Wissahickon Course at the A.W. Tillinghast-designed Philadelphia Cricket Club in Round 1.

As my colleague James Colgan wrote earlier this week, a perplexing question surrounded pro golf’s return to the Philadelphia area: Will what makes these old-school masterpieces special matter when facing today’s modern technology?

Philly Cricket Club is the type of course that the best players in the world should play. It’s a world away from the cookie-cutter courses the PGA Tour typically plays. But at just a shade over 7,100 yards, Philly Cricket Club, molded in 1922, is defenseless without firm and fast conditions. Even then, it doesn’t have a lot of teeth for the game’s best players armed with today’s equipment.

On Friday, with the wind blowing and the rain coming down, the PGA Tour’s best saw a different side of Philly Cricket Club. With the ball not flying nearly as far, McIlroy, a vocal proponent of rolling back the golf ball, better understood how Tillinghast’s creation was meant to be attacked.

“Absolutely. It’s a little more strategic,” McIlroy said after shooting a second-round three-under 67. “Even today, heavier air, rain, a bit of wind. I draw back on a few holes and then I hit driver on a couple. I think there’s a lot of debate about it, but if the golf ball just went a little shorter, this course would be awesome. Not that it isn’t awesome anyway, but right now, for the distances we hit it, it’s probably 500 or 600 yards too short.

“It would be amazing to be able to play courses like this the way the architect wanted you to play them.”

On Thursday, McIlroy hit his drive at the short par-4 second 373 yards on the way to making an easy birdie. On Friday, with the wind blowing in a different direction and the ball throttled back, McIlroy’s drive went 314. A sloppy second shot found the bunker, and he made bogey.

The USGA and R&A’s rollback — coming in 2028 — calls for the longest hitters on Tour to lose 13-15 yards in driving distance, with average pros losing 9-11 yards. McIlroy, who would be in the first category, has been a proponent of the rollback plan for the long-term sustainability of the game. It would also help return some teeth to golf’s cathedrals.

Rolling back the ball would theoretically make pros play places like Philly Cricket as intended and not allow them to hammer driver past the course’s defenses.

Justin Thomas, who also shot three under on Friday and is tied with McIlroy at 7 under, pointed to the par-4 10th as a hole where the conditions altered the strategy.

“It’s just the ball didn’t go anywhere when it’s like this,” Thomas said. “A hole like 10 is a good example. We’re flipping sand wedges, gap wedges in yesterday, and I hit a drive as good as I could and hit a pretty good 6-iron in today.

“It’s unfortunate, again, with the softness, the course can’t really show its teeth too much. But weather like this definitely makes the play a little bit more — it’s harder to make birdies. You can get up-and-down because it’s still pretty soft, but it’s harder to make birdies.”

In Round 1, Thomas hit his drive on No. 10 329 yards. His drive on Friday went just 278. He made par both days.

Sepp Straka, who averages just 295 yards off the tee compared to McIlroy’s 317, is playing the course the way Tillinghast envisioned because the fairway bunkers that sit between 300 and 310 yards are a factor for him.

For others, they are not.

“This is definitely a course that a lot of those bunkers, like I said, are 300 carry. If you’re carrying it over 300, you can take them out of play,” Straka, who sits two shots off the lead at 10 under, said Friday. “I feel like I’m playing it the way it’s supposed to be played, but definitely for a lot of guys, it’s a little bit of the penalty off the tee is definitely taken away.”

Thomas and Straka both hinted at Philly Cricket’s true identity. It’s a course with penalty off the tee and complex greens, where making birdie should be difficult.

That wasn’t the case Thursday when 10 players broke the course record and the scoring average was around 66. The rough conditions gave the course some teeth on Friday, and the scoring average ballooned to around 70.

Philly Cricket Club is, to use McIlroy’s words, “awesome.” It’s like a Renaissance painting carved into the Pennsylvania suburbs. It’s undulating greens and wide array of holes, including a 117-yard par-3 and a 362-yard par-4, should be a challenging canvas for the world’s best to paint masterpieces, not just grip it and rip it.

On Friday, we got a glimpse of the real Philly Cricket Club — a Golden Age wonder with questions to ask if the players don’t have the answers before they even tee off.