Following a satisfying conclusion to the Masters, the PGA Tour returns to a trip to Hilton Head for another Signature Event. A stacked field plays the 2024 RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links. As always, here is your early preview of the 2024 RBC Heritage and a preview of how to bet.
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2024 RBC Heritage Preview
The Golf Course
Harbour Town Golf Links is a public golf course designed by Pete Dye in 1967, with consultation from Jack Nicklaus. Over 38,000 rounds are played at Harbour Town annually, making it one of the most popular public golf courses in America.
For an amateur, it is a wonderful golf course to play. Even from the back tees, the golf course is not overly long. The bunkers are also relatively shallow and very playable. However, the greens are very small.
They average only about 3,700 square feet per green. Harbour Town has the second smallest greens on the PGA Tour and is well guarded by water hazards and bunkers, as expected from the diabolical Pete Dye.
There are also trees EVERYWHERE. It’s the perfect golf course for retirees who do nothing but hit every shot dead straight over and over and over. But for those who fight a nasty slice, this golf course is certainly not for you. Even the longest and highest of hitters won’t be able to cut corners over the oak and palmetto trees.
And over the years, it has given the PGA Tour pros some fits:
There are some good holes over the first 15 of the round; however, Harbour Town’s closing stretch makes it stand out. The golf course opens up to the inter-coastal and provides some excellent vistas of the bay and some fairly challenging golf for the players.
16th Hole – Par 4, 434 Yards
(Courtesy of GolfCourseGurus.com)
If you took anyone with just a smidge of knowledge about golf architecture and asked them who designed this hole, I bet they’d come up with the right answer. This is such a classic Pete Dye design. The hole is protected down the left side by a large, elongated fairway bunker, but it encourages the pro to play towards it so they have a shorter and better angle at most hole locations.
There’s also a tree right smack in the middle of the fairway, though it likely will not create a direct obstruction for players not named Cameron Young.
But for those who play down the right side, not only will they have a longer approach, but on days where the pin location requires a draw, the tree provides quite the obstacle for that shot shape. Pete Dye is famous for these tiny little annoyances on a hole to fluster golfers. This is another example of one.
(Courtesy of GolfCourseGurus.com)
This one is played directly into the prevailing winds off the sound. It’s an intimidating tee shot on Sunday if the winds are up. Anything short of the green will either find the marshes short or the small strip of the bunker about four feet below the putting surface that they’ll have to blast up toward. In addition, a very narrow rectangular bunker to the right of the green can create impossible lies and stances to get the ball up and down for par.
18th Hole – Par 4, 472 Yards
(Courtesy of GolfCourseGurus.com)
This is the signature hole on the golf course, as it plays towards the famous Hilton Head lighthouse in the distance and requires two forced carries over the marshes and the sound.
Also, with the wind coming from the left, it will take a very errant hook from a right-handed golfer to hit in the water on both the tee shot and the approach. Still, with water all the way down the left and a large, elongated bunker short right of the green, it’s a very intimidating final hole.
Notable Golf YouTube Vlogger Mark Crossfield did a film series of Harbour Town in some very challenging wind conditions. Here’s a video of him taking on the final three holes of the golf course:
Betting Strategies
To begin the betting strategies for the 2024 RBC Heritage, here is general information about the Harbour Town Golf Links.
Yardage: 7,213 Yards
- Harbour Town is the 5th shortest golf course played on the PGA Tour.
Par: 71
- Harbour Town only has three Par 5’s. Two on the front nine, and one on the back nine.
Fairway Width: 30-35 Yards Wide
Average Green Size: ~3,700 Sq. Feet
- Harbour Town features the smallest greens played on the PGA Tour.
Agronomy:
- Greens: Poa Trivialis Overseed
- Fairways: Perennial rye overseed
- Rough: Perennial ryegrass overseed – 1.25″
Once again, a naturally bermuda golf course will feature overseeded surfaces. However, the last few tournaments played on overseeded surfaces has seen the bermuda begin to emerge from dormancy. The greens and rough are starting to behave a little more like a natural bermuda as it emerges from the winter dormancy.
In addition, the rough is half as long as it was for last year’s 2023 RBC Heritage. Last year’s rough was 2.5″. This year, it will only be 1.25″. The 1.25″ cut is typically the length the rough has been for the last few RBC Heritages.
Past Champions:
Here are the last five champions at the RBC Heritage, with their winning score and estimated pre-tournament closing odds:
- 2023: Matt Fitzpatrick, -17, Playoff (28/1)
- 2022: Jordan Spieth, -13, Playoff (40/1)
- 2021: Stewart Cink, -19 (100/1)
- 2020: Webb Simpson, -22 (28/1)
- 2019: C.T. Pan, -12
The last five RBC Heritages have been a mixed bag of winners. Longshots C.T. Pan and Stewart Cink won in 2019 and 2021. Webb Simpson, Jordan Spieth and Matt Fitzpatrick were all one of the favorites in the tournament in the years that they won.
It’s important to note that the fields in 2020, 2022 and 2023 were much stronger than they were in 2019 and 2021. The 2020 RBC Heritage was played in June and was one of the first tournaments back from the pandemic. Top players wanted to play in it. And the last two events have had elevated status and featured the top golfers on the PGA Tour.
Given the 2024 RBC Heritage once again retains its elevated status, it’s likely another top favorite under 50/1 will prevail given the recent trends.
Average Scoring:
- 2023: -0.83
- 2022: -0.55
- 2021: -0.71
- 2020: -2.06
- 2019: +0.21
In warm and benign conditions, Harbour Town definitely can be picked apart by professional golfers. Despite small targets and narrow corridors, the players can rip up the golf course because of the lack of rough and the abundance of shorter approach shots.
However, Harbour Town can turn to mean with the right weather conditions. For example, the 2019 RBC Heritage saw colder and windier conditions in all four rounds. Each round that year played over par. At the 2022 RBC Heritage, high winds disrupted the 2nd round and saw average scores balloon to +1.51. The following day, in benign conditions, however, the average score was -2.09.
As of this writing, expect plenty of birdies. Temperatures will hover in the mid- to high 70s all week, and there isn’t a threat of significant wind until late Sunday afternoon. As such, expect the winning score to approach the teens and have an under par cut line.
Strokes Gained Difficulty Rankings
Here are the difficulty rankings of each stroke gained category at Harbour Town of all golf courses played (including majors) since 2015. There have been 88 golf courses played during that period.
- Off-The-Tee: 5th
- Approach: 16th
- Around-the-Green: 82nd
- Putting: 31st
Harbour Town is one of the more tougher ball-striking tests on the PGA Tour. Given its layout, it’s not a surprise. The greens are the smallest the PGA Tour plays on.
Small targets amplify difficulty, especially on the longer approach shots. Since 2015, Harbour Town has featured the ninth most difficult approach shots from over 150 yards. Given the high abundance of shots between 175 and 200 yards (see below), it’s a difficult golf course for approach shots.
In addition, the fairways are narrow and players are often forced to club down to hit into the middle of dog legs. Players can’t just wail away mindlessly. Since 2015, the average driving distance at Harbour Town is only 275 yards. That’s the 3rd shortest average drive of all golf courses played during that stretch. As such, that makes the degree of difficulty for tee shots higher than one might think it would be.
However, there is very little penalty for missing a fairway at Harbour Town. Since 2015, the difference in score between a missed fairway and hit fairway on a hole is only a 0.25 stroke difference. That’s the 3rd smallest difference of all golf courses played on the PGA Tour since 2015.
This is likely due to the fact that players don’t miss big often at Harbour Town because they’re clubbing down so often. A missed fairway likely results to only being in 1.25″ overseeded rough, which isn’t difficult to hit out of and into the green.
Since 2015, the average green in regulation rate at Harbour Town has been a little under 60%. So, players do deploy their short game often. However, since 2015 Harbour Town features the 7th easiest conditions to get up and down from off the green.
While some of the greenside bunkers can be tricky to get out of, getting up and down from the fairway and rough has never been much of a challenge at Harbour Town. At the end of the day, it is a resort course meant to be playable to amateurs who miss a high volume of greens. Of course, that wouldn’t be challenging for professionals.
Predictive Skillsets
Here is the relative skillset chart of the characteristics that are most predictive of success at Harbour Town Golf Links (per DataGolf). This chart previews the types of players one would expect to do well at the 2024 RBC Heritage.
Harbour Town is one of the few remaining golf courses on the PGA Tour where shorter and more accurate hitters stand a better chance at success. Harbour Town isn’t a golf course won by distance. It’s won mostly through plotting around the tight corridors, hitting solid iron shots, and taking advantage of easy greenside surrounds due to lower-than-average green in regulation rates.
These three areas (driving accuracy, iron play, and scrambling) are more indicative of success at Harbour Town than the typical PGA Tour setup.
However, as this tournament has gotten a stronger field, players who don’t typically fit this mold (particularly with regard to driving accuracy) have seen a ton of success.
Players like Cameron Young, Sahith Theegala, and Cameron Davis, three players not known for their driving accuracy, have all had good results here. And even bombers like Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson have found a lot of success at Harbour Town in the past.
While the skillset chart above shows a higher correlation between players who are accurate off the tee and have success at Harbour Town, it doesn’t mean targeting them exclusively. It’s important to still keep in mind that driving accuracy stats mostly capture what one does with a driver.
The inaccurate bombers won’t be hitting those clubs as often. And if they’re very good with their long irons (like some of the examples listed above are), that’s more indicative of what to expect from them at Harbour Town this week.
Approach Shot Proximity
Here are the approach shot proximity buckets for Harbour Town (per DataGolf) from 2023. This will preview what types of approach shots players are expected to hit at the 2024 RBC Heritage:
Harbour Town is a test of how players do between 100 and 200 yards. There is a much higher volume of shots from this range than the typical PGA Tour setup. Particularly from 175-200 yards, as this is the length of all four Par 3’s at Harbour Town.
There’s also a higher-than-average volume of shots from over 250 yards (albeit it’s only 2.3 shots per round). This data is likely coming from the Par 5 5th and the driveable Par 4 9th. The Par 5 2nd is typically a shot under 250 yards, while the Par 5 15th is usually one that forces players to lay up on their second because it’s very easy to find yourself out of position on the hole.
Follow the tips in this preview, and one should put together a solid DFS lineup and betting card for the 2024 RBC Heritage.