Brandon Stearns (3)
The PGA Tour is coming to Philadelphia Cricket Club and Dan Meersman and his team will be ready when the club hosts the Truist Championship the week of May 5.
The tournament is traditionally held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte but was shifted this year out of necessity: Quail Hollow is hosting the PGA Championship immediately following the Truist.
Meersman’s title is chief planning officer and director of grounds and facilities. Ultimately, he is responsible for three golf courses and 45 holes. He and his team are charged with transforming the club’s Wissahickon Course into a stage for the finest players in the world.
Meersman’s team for the Truist will include his crews from all three courses but will also include more than 100 volunteers from about two dozen other clubs. He says job boards have been instrumental to the process.
“The electronic job boards are handy,” he says. “The GS3 and the USGA’s new software, that’s been helpful having everything within the (DEACON) app.”
Technology is being utilized on the golf course as well as in the form of autonomous mowers and a drone sprayer.
Meersman has made a point of utilizing video technology to keep his members informed about pre-tournament preparations. The Wissahickon Course, an A.W. Tillinghast design that opened in 1922, was closed this past winter, then reopened for member play on April 1. It will remain open through May 3 amid all the hustle and bustle.
“Our video updates have been huge,” Meersman says. “As the buildout has been occurring, we’re showing the members overhead videos of how the trucks are navigating the campus, how you as a golfer coming to the golf course (are affected), the things you’ll have to navigate when you show up. That’s been good because members who show up to the golf course aren’t surprised by what they’re seeing; they’ve already seen it on a little two-and-a-half-minute video before they get to the golf course.”
The routing of the golf course for the Truist Championship will differ from what it is on a day-to-day basis. The eighth hole for members will be the first hole during the tournament; the tournament’s four finishing holes — located within a quarter mile of one another — are the seventh, sixth, fifth and fourth holes for daily play.
“It consolidates the build near our driving range,” Meersman explains, “and a main road that accesses the golf course. That way a lot of the tournament buildout is off of this main road, which really minimizes the chances for extensive damage.”
Philadelphia Cricket Club will remain a busy place after the Truist Championship departs as Meersman and his team will embark on upgrades to the range and short-game areas.
“They’ll have about a month when (the PGA Tour) will start to move out and return the course back to normal,” Meersman says. “We’re going to repair everything with sod so that should be a very fast process.
“And then what’s nice is we are combining some capital projects to our driving range and our short game area with the year of the Truist. That way we combine our disruptions in a single year instead of putting that out over multiple years. So, after the tournament, the Truist will move out in about a month and we will start in on some pretty extensive driving range and short game area capital improvement work.”
Rick Woelfel is a Philadelphia-based writer and senior Golf Course Industry contributor.
