RBC Heritage Preview
Course: Harbour Town
Purse: $20 million
We’re heading just a couple hours north to Hilton Head, South Carolina for the RBC Heritage. The Valero the week before The Masters had a weak field, but that won’t be the case here - it’s another “designated event” with a monster payday. It’s still kind of weird to me that this event pays more than The Masters did. I’m not opposed to the increased purses, it’s just odd in my opinion to have the most important events pay less than a dozen others.
Harbour Town has hosted The RBC since 1969, one of the longer course/event relationships on tour. Arnold Palmer won that first event, afterwards calling Harbour Town “a thinking man’s course.”
I’ll get into more about this in the next section of the email, but that stamp of approval was huge for the career of the designer, a young Pete Dye.
The field is loaded for this season’s RBC Heritage, but that’s not really the norm historically. When you see the list of past winners, know that those occurred with a purse of less than half this size. I think it will be harder for an extreme longshot to win with the tougher field.
2023: Matt Fitzpatrick
2022: Jordan Spieth
2021: Stewart Cink
2020: Webb Simpson
2019: CT Pan
2018: Satoshi Kodaira
I have a few trends for the winners of this event, really nothing compared to last week. With the field being so different, I’ll be using these a little more loosely this week, if at all.
14/14 were 26 or older
9/14 were 30 or older
13/17 played Masters previous week
Harbour Town Preview
In 1967, Pete Dye was contracted to design a course on a sparsely populated area of Hilton Head Island. Dye had previously worked on a few courses in the Midwest, but this was his first bigger opportunity. At the time, courses like the ones he built were unheard of. Taking driver out of the players’ hands was not a common philosophy (it’s not popular enough today either in my opinion). At a time when design was thinking ‘bigger’, Dye went ‘smaller’. Obviously this paid off for him, I feel like I am mentioning him all the time in these posts. More of his courses are played on the schedule than any other designer.
Harbour Town is one of three courses at Sea Pines Resort. You don’t have to stay at the resort to play it, all of them are fully public. However, this resort is always really highly rated by golf ranking sites, so I would go for the full package if anyone is looking for a golf trip plan idea. At a la carte pricing, it will run you $450 per person to play Harbour Town.
Per Datagolf, we have a medium high correlation with course history this week. Anytime we have a Pete Dye course that’s likely going to be the case. We’ll approach that by valuing course history and some comparable courses. It’s the first trip for some of the better guys, I’m open to back them if they’ve done well on other Dye tracks.
At 7100 yards, guys will rarely pull driver at Harbour Town. Fairways are on the narrow side too, just easier to hit since iron could be in hand so often. I’ll still be using Fairways Gained in some model this week, likely Good Drives Gained as well. Both of these stats will be low weight though, OTT stats have had very little to do with the winning score in years past. The rough is kept short and really is of no penalty. Where accuracy comes into play is more in avoiding tree trouble. Trees line so many of the holes, there is a bit of a claustrophobic feel to some of them.
When we lower the value of OTT, we’re naturally going to turn up the weight on approach play. This is basically the Pete Dye philosophy: your first shot exists to create the shot that should matter. His courses grade who can hit targets; landing zones off the tee, but especially into small greens on approach. We see a larger than usual amount of approach shots from 150-200 yards, so that’s the proximity range we’ll focus some extra attention on this week.
The GIR% is lower than average, 59% to 65%. A huge part of this is size of greens being so tiny - average is 6000 square feet, Harbour Town is 3700 square feet. The only smaller greens on Tour are at Pebble Beach. Naturally, ARG stats will matter more with increased need for it. Scrambling success rates are higher than average, but I’ll still want to reward good scrambling players.
Putting is a much easier test than last week. The surface is listed as Bermuda, but it’s another week where it’s more of a mix due to time of year. We know the other courses that use this Bermuda/Poa mix, so I might pull a more specific look at putting history this week. With small greens, three-putts are pretty rare and not something we’ll worry about.
As always, let’s summarize what we know about the course and event history to think about who we want to target this week.
We want to back good ball strikers who may lack distance - accuracy and short game are the keys for Harbour Town. I want to find guys who have played well on Pete Dye courses the past two years. We need a good scrambler and an above average putter, approach shots will be the main focus though. Ideally the guys we back have played here at least once with some level of success.
Early Leans
I’m a bit more in the dark than most weeks for this section - exciting last week in the golf world and a busy one for me professionally. I don’t really have much research done ahead of the models this time, so would go off of gut-feel and what I saw at Augusta.
Tommy Fleetwood played well and should fit Harbour Town well. His price will be unfair, as it always is, but he could be a good first look. I could see a strong case for Morikawa after last week - just not sure I can back a guy who has otherwise struggled in 2024. Same could be said on Tom Kim.
Scheffler is in the field at time of writing, but I fully expect him to withdraw. When he does, odds will be slashed for literally everyone else on the board - so if you have someone you like, best to get those bets in as soon as you can.
How to Watch
We have a lot of streaming opportunities now, but I still want to know the TV schedule (all times EST).
Thursday: 2:00-6:00pm, Golf Channel
Friday: 2:00-6:00pm, Golf Channel
Saturday: 1:00-3:00pm, Golf Channel; 3:00-6:00, CBS
Sunday: 1:00-3:00pm, Golf Channel; 3:00-6:00, CBS
Closing Thoughts
Really fun week at Augusta. Even though Scottie won by a comfortable margin, the weekend was full of excitement. It did feel somewhat inevitable for him to win at different points of the event, speaks to how much better he is than the rest of the field right now. Exciting for Aberg to do so well in his first major, and for Homa to finally contend in one. On the gambling side, our massive ‘make cut’ parlay won late Friday - hoping some of you were able to celebrate the weekend with a little extra money in the account.
It can be tough to transition to regular events after a major, but we have a similar field and feel this week. Harbour Town is among the most popular course on the schedule with players too - a very cool, creative test that any of us can play someday.
This won’t be the must-see-TV The Masters was. It’s still a very cool course with a strong field though, so I’m hoping we get a bit more suspense at least. We’re also back to the usual content schedule this week, meaning no trends piece. I’ll be back on Wednesday with data and bets to consider.
Until then, best of luck with all your bets.
Matt / Ziggy