PHILADELPHIA — Ol’ Tillie would’ve been proud.

Proud of his golf course. Proud of the players. Proud of his people.

The PGA Tour stopped in Philadelphia for the first time in seven years and the first time ever at Philadelphia Cricket Club, an undersized masterpiece of agronomy and agriculture built 103 years ago among horse farms and narrow roads by Philly native A.W. Tillinghast. His Winged Foot, Baltusrol, and Bethpage Black tracks have earned him greater fame, but Cricket is where Tillie belonged, where he best loved to play, and where he had his ashes spread.

The place sold out its gate tickets for all four rounds, even that cold, wet, windy Friday. The folks behaved with decorum unusual for a Philly sporting event, save for a few “Go Birds!” calls and some odd driving-range taunts aimed at Shane Lowry, who’d been Jason Kelce’s pro-am partner Wednesday. More than anything, though, the course, despite its modest, 7,100-yard length, its wide fairways, huge greens, and modest rough, was nowhere near as defenseless as some predicted.

Most predictors figured on multiple final scores of 20-under par or better, but Sepp Straka won with an unremarkable 16-under. How? Tournament officials stretched the tees, grew the rough, unearthed bunkers, shaved the greens and tucked the pins. Between the wind and the rain and the heat and the cold, it was Northeast golf at its unpredictable finest. The course played over-par on both Friday, in an inch of rain, and Saturday in 20-mph winds.

“I think it held up,” said Xander Schauffle, who finished tied for 11th at 9-under. “It’s been a while since we’ve had an event (like) a British Open, when you sort of got, you know, rain, really slow greens, then soft greens and no wind, then you got a lot of wind and super fast greens.”

“I just wish we played more tournaments up here,” said Justin Thomas, who tied Shane Lowry for second at 14-under. “The golf courses are great. You get an energy in the crowd and just feels — you know, you have a lot of buzz.”

Minutes before, the area around the 18th green was echoing the name of the Masters champion, the most popular golfer on the planet:

“Rorrr-eee! Rorrr-eee!”

“Look, it’s been amazing,“ said Rory McIlroy over the din. ”They’re very enthusiastic. They’re loud. They’re relentless, in terms of like I must have heard my name a million times this week."

McIlroy finished at 10-under, tied for seventh, his 10th top-10 in his last 14 starts as he heads to the PGA Championship this week. He was even more popular than Eagles star Jordan Mailata, who followed McIlroy because he’s good friends withy Tony Finau, McIlroy’s playing partner Sunday.

All of them — McIlroy, the world’s No. 2 player, Schauffle, who is No. 3, and Thomas, No. 5 — fretted before the tournament that the week might be a disaster. They are used to going to the same towns year after year, staying the same hotels or houses, and playing the same long, predictable venues. Philly and Cricket were mysteries to most.

The course’s 18 holes were not the only issue in question. The Truist (formerly the Wells Fargo) came to Cricket this year because the PGA Championship will be played at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C., this week, and the Tour needed a one-off substitute site, and nearby Aronimink will host the PGA Championship next year.

Ironically, Tillie built the Wissahickon Course so world-class golfers like himself could play there in big tournaments, since the main Cricket Club course on grounds about five miles southeast simply could not, but the Tour never found its way to Flourtown, and by the time it did, the world had drastically changed.

Were the grounds big enough to handle the 14,000 spectators every day? Were the roads navigable for the off-site parking shuttle buses? Could Lorraine Run, the creek than bisects the grounds, handle multiple days of rain runoff?

Yes. Yes. From the cheesesteaks to the donut joint to the silver cricket bat that served as a the first-place trophy, a thousands times, yes.

“I’m at a loss for superlatives: Fantastic, phenomenal, energized,“ said the tournament’s executive director, Joie Chitwood III, who has Reading roots as the grandson of the eponymous daredevil. Chitwood, who also is the executive director of the 2026 Presidents Cup, headed an all-star cast of tournament organizers from around the country who threw together a successful event in a crowded metropolitan area in just nine months. ”This has lived up to everything I hoped it would be, and even more.”

The players loved every aspect of it.

“It’s old-school, for sure,” said Andrew Novak, whose 6-under 64 was the low round Sunday. He finished tied for 17th, at 7-under. “The overall vibe of this place is really cool.”

Fans were even happier, especially since the event allowed them a peek at one of the area‘;s exclusive golf cathedrals.

“I loved the setup,” said Tim Devers, 53, a respiratory therapist and avid golfer from Jenkintown, who spent his day off trudging through the slop on Friday. “The shot-making value the pros had to play at Cricket is different than what you see week in and week out on the Tour. I mean, Philadelphia is long overdue to get a regular tour stop.”

Between weather concerns, access to the best courses, and events already established on the Tour, that might never happen, though Cricket seems open to a conversation as a contender for events like the Truist. At any rate, in the past 15 years the area has handled the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion, the 2010 and 2011 AT&T National at Aronimink, the 2018 BMW Championship at Aronimink and now the Truist. With the PGA Championship coming to Aronimink next year and with the U.S. Open returning to Merion in 2030, 2040,and 2050, the Tour clearly sees Philly as a golf gold mine.

“Philadelphia fans are cut from a different cloth,” Chitwood said. “I think if it had been snowing on Friday, they still would have showed up. I think I’ve said it before, and it’s probably an understatement, but Philly and golf go quite well together.”

Never more so this week, at this tournament.

The tournament is a Signature Event, the sixth of of eight “elevated” competitions on the PGA Tour designed to entice marquee names from defecting to their rival, the moneyed LIV Tour. Signature Events have elite, limited fields (72 this week), no cut, purses of $20 million and a $3.6 million check for the winner.

In an era of pre-fab and sheet rock, this week the pros used the creaky, carpeted member’s locker room as their changing area and ate in wood-paneled dining rooms.

It also seemed fitting that, in an era when most have the body-fat percentages of professional boxers, that two old-school looking professional golfers, Straka and Lowry, went to toe-to-toe, if not belly-to-belly.

In the end, Straka‘s 2-under 68 in the final round bettered Thomas’ 3-under and Lowry’s even-par 70. Cricket re-routed some of their holes to make Nos. 16, 17, and 18 the deciding test. Straka parred all three. Lowry bogeyed the par-3 16th and the par-4 18th, three-putting the last, diabolical green on Wissahickon to seal Straka‘s win.

“It felt like, as you kept going, the round kept getting harder and harder,” Straka said. “I like the routing a lot.”

It was a fitting finish to a glorious week on a spectacular golf course in front of ravenous fans.

Yes indeed, Ol’ Tillie would have been proud.

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