RBC Heritage One and Done Picks
Going from Augusta National to Harbour Town is always quite the drastic change. Not only could the golf courses not be further apart from each other in terms of how they play, but the high stakes nature of a major championship is always going to be make any event after feel less than significant, even if that event happens to be a Signature Event like we have this week. Nevertheless, there's still $20 million up for grabs and a bunch of FedExCup points on the table.
Every top player on the PGA Tour is in the field this week apart from Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose and Hideki Matsuyama. McIlroy will get some much-deserved time off to celebrate his second straight Masters win, while Rose will look to reset after blowing a two-shot lead on the back nine. Top-3 players Scottie Scheffler and Cameron Young will headline this field. Scheffler is coming off a runner-up at The Masters, while Young was in the final group with McIlroy but settled for a T3.
Justin Thomas is the defending champion of the RBC Heritage. A year ago he snapped a nearly three-year winless drought. His good friend Jordan Spieth is hoping to end a four-year winless drought this week. Spieth's last came was at Harbour Town in 2022 and then he fell in a playoff to Matt Fitzpatrick in 2023.
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Course Tidbits
- Course: Harbour Town Golf Links (7,243 yards, par 71)
- Location: Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
- Purse: $20 million -- $3.6 million to winner
- Defending Champion: Justin Thomas (-17)
- 2025 Scoring Average: 69.37
- Average Winning Score Last 5 Years: -17
Harbour Town is the definition of target golf. It's all about hitting it to a spot in the fairway to give yourself the best angle into the second smallest greens on the PGA Tour. It is not a course you can overpower, and driver usage will be significantly down compared to last week at Augusta. That said, there is opportunity to scramble if you miss some of these fairways, but it will require the player to be very creative and work it around trees.
Iron play is usually the most significant factor to success at this course, but because of the small greens there will be a lot at lot of opportunities to gain strokes around these greens. The last four winners of Spieth, Fitzpatrick, Scheffler and Thomas all have some of the best short-games on Tour.
These small greens are also very flat. It will be quite the stark difference compared to the incredible slopes players faced at Augusta. If a player is locked in with the putter, you can make a lot of birdies around this course. The average winning score over the last five years at Harbour Town is 17-under-par, so you'll need to have a few rounds in the mid-60s to have a chance. The weather is also going to be perfect again this week.
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RBC Heritage: One and Done Picks
Henley very nearly won The Masters a week ago. He just had one too many putts slip by on the back-nine. Nonetheless, he absolutely lapped the field in SG: Approach on the toughest course to gain strokes on approach on. That bodes very well for his chances at the RBC Heritage and these tiny greens. Henley is also one of the most accurate drivers on Tour. He has finished top 20 in four of the last five years at Harbour Town. --Ryan Andrade
Fitzpatrick wasn't a factor in the Masters, which was his first start after winning the Valspar. But he wasn't bad, either. He tied for 18th and was in positive territory in every strokes-gained metric but putting, according to DataGolf. He ranked 10th in the field in SG: Tee-to-Green. Fitzpatrick won here in 2023 and finished fourth two years before that. --Len Hochberg
The 2024 RBC Heritage champion just paced the Masters Tournament in SG: Tee-to-Green en route to his runner-up finish at Augusta National, and Scheffler now heads to another suitable approach-fest venue on Hilton Head Island. Facing a limited Signature Event field that's barren of several fellow OAD alphas such as McIlroy/Jon Rahm/Bryson DeChambeau, the world No. 1 is provided a prime opportunity to collect a $3.6M top prize while many of our competitors psychologically still want to "save" their best chess piece for later. --Bryce Danielson
I'm doing it. I think this is the week to deploy Scheffler. Sure, there are going to be a number of places to use him down the road, but as I always say, it's harder to win a major than a signature event, so why not use him in a spot like this with a comparable purse? Scheffler had what looked like his best stuff on the weekend at Augusta and I'm expecting that to carry over to this week. He won this event in 2024 and he's never finished worse than T11 here, so the floor is high and we all know where the ceiling is. Another potential bonus is that with so many good options at the top this week, I might be able to get Scheffler with some low ownership overall. --Greg Vara
It's no secret that this is the tournament that Fitzpatrick circles on the calendar. His favorite venue outside of Augusta National, he even has the lighthouse as his driver cover. The 2023 event champion hasn't been able to follow up that success since, but his game was in a rough place last spring. Fitzpatrick has turned the corner since last summer and has a win and a runner-up across his last three starts. Only McIlroy is gaining more strokes from tee-to-green this season. I can't think of a better spot to use Fitz. --Ryan Pohle
Scheffler arrives at Harbour Town with the best scoring average in the field since 2020 (67.42). He owns a win here in 2024 and is coming off a solo second at Augusta where he contended all week with a sharp iron game. His 2024 victory was built on a +1.72 SG: Approach with over three strokes gained tee-to-green, which matches the profiles of recent winners at this Pete Dye course. With just one win on the season all the way back in January at the AmEx, he's hungry. And he's due. --Lauren Jump
The results have been checkered for Fitzpatrick at Harbour Town, but he does have a win on his ledger plus a T4, and he missed the cut just once in his last eight attempts. Since the start of that stretch he ranks top-25 in the field in just about every strokes gained category, and he checks in sixth in SG: Total. I'm tempted to save Fitzpatrick for another spot down the road, but he has been on a roll for a month, so now's the time. --Kevin O'Brien
RBC Heritage: One and Done Fades
Young has been hitting the ball extremely well of late en route to this run of finishes going T7-T3-Win-T3. That said, Harbour Town is not a course where his biggest skillset of driving is going to help him. You can't overpower this course. He also has finished outside the top 50 in his last three starts here. If you haven't used Young yet, save him for upcoming venues like Doral, Quail Hollow and Aronimink, all of which should be excellent fits. --Ryan Andrade
Schauffele is having a fine season. He added another top-10 last week at the Masters. It sure looks like a win is coming soon for him. But not this week. He has played Harbour Town six times with just one top-10, finishing fourth three years ago. It's easy to envision a second top-10 this week, but not much more than that. --Len Hochberg
Although he's placed top-4 in two of his last four trips to Harbour Town, McNealy's iron play hasn't been sharp since a missed cut at The Genesis Invitational, and he ranks just 72nd of 82 among this field in overall proximity from 150-200 yards this season. With one victory through his first 177 career PGA Tour starts, I'm always happy to fade some chalk on a low win-equity profile like McNealy. We're not trying to grind out a top-20 finish in this format. --Bryce Danielson
Again, another tough week to find a high-end guy that's a bad play, but I think Morikawa fits the bill this week only because of his injury concerns. He played very well this past week at the Masters, but if you watched him, he didn't look 100% healthy. I'm worried that he gutted his way through four rounds at Augusta because it was a major and this week he might not have the same resolve. Beyond that, his track record here is just okay, with two top-10s in six starts, but nothing better than a T7. --Greg Vara
I think a lot of people that still have Young available will be tempted to fire him in as their pick this week considering how well he's played lately and how close he was to winning at Augusta. But this isn't a place that he's played that well at, going T54-T62-T51 over the last three years with his distance advantage somewhat negated. Harbour Town has some similarities to Pebble Beach, where Young finished T55 in February. I think there will be better venues that suit his distance strength, and saving him for the PGA Championship or U.S. Open should be better spots. --Ryan Pohle
Tiny greens punish players who struggle with scrambling or putting under pressure at Habour Town, and Conners ranks in the lower half of the field in both putting and around-the-green numbers right now. His course history offers no compelling counterargument either, with just three top 20 finishes over his last ten trips to Hilton Head. Save him for another week. --Lauren Jump
If there's a spot for Thomas to snap out of his slump it's at Harbour Town, where he picked up the win a year ago. That would take quite a leap of faith, though, as the strokes gained numbers remain dreadful and he has not been all that straight with the driver. --Kevin O'Brien
Don't get burned by late withdrawals. Visit RotoWire's PGA tournament field page for a live-updated summary of the field for the current week and list of players who have dropped out.
