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RBC Heritage Betting Preview
Following an exciting week at Augusta National that saw Scottie Scheffler pick up his second green jacket, the action continues in Hilton Head with a signature event for this week's RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links. The no-cut event features a small field of just 69 players with Scheffler headlining as the favorite at 4-1 odds, while Viktor Hovland is the only eligible player electing to skip the event.
Last year, Matt Fitzpatrick (25-1) defeated Jordan Spieth with a tap-in birdie on the third playoff hole for his second PGA Tour victory.
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Course Characteristics
Par 71, 7,213 yards
Average Strokes Gained Rankings: RBC Heritage Winners since 2019
- SG: Off-the-Tee: 28.0
- SG: Approach: 9.0
- SG: Around-the-Green: 12.0
- SG: Putting: 22.4
- SG: Tee-to-Green: 4.6
- Driving Distance: 20.8
- Driving Accuracy: 48.0
Harbour Town is a Pete Dye designed golf course and as you'd expect with his layouts, it's different than most Tour setups as a positional and strategic venue. It's not a particularly long course with only three par-4s over 460 yards and features several dogleg holes. Off the tee, players are faced with moderately wide, tree-lined fairways to go along with minimal rough. There are some forced layups on tee shots and in general, players aren't required to use their driver much. As we can see from the stats above, iron play is a key statistic here with the winner ranking inside the top-10 in SG: Approach in four straight years. I think the ideal course fit here tends to be accurate drivers, those that approach it well from 150-200 yards and quality around the green players due to the smaller green complexes.
Hilton Head Hitters
The following golfers, with a minimum of two appearances, have the lowest scoring average at Harbour Town over the last five years.
- Patrick Cantlay: 68.2
- Cam Davis: 68.3
- Matt Fitzpatrick: 68.5
- J.T. Poston: 68.6
- Corey Conners: 68.8
It's not often that you see a player with four top-5s at an event without a win, but that's what we have with Cantlay, who lost in a playoff two years ago before coming up one shot back last year. He comes into the event as the fifth choice on the board at 16-1 odds despite having regressed a bit this year with just one top-10 across eight starts. A bit farther down the leaderboard we find Poston, who has been hit or miss over his five trips to Hilton Head with a pair of missed cuts and three top-10s. Since starting off the year strong with back-to-back top-10s and another one at Riviera, he's struggled in the move to the east coast with a best finish since of T30 last week. Considering that was his best result at Augusta, I'd bet on a strong week for Poston.
Approach Artists
These five players, on a per-round basis, gained the most strokes on approach over their last 20 rounds.
- Tom Hoge: 1.49
- Shane Lowry: 1.28
- Corey Conners: 1.22
- Scottie Scheffler: 1.12
- Austin Eckroat: 1.07
Hoge's dominance with his iron play has continued as he's now gained strokes on approach in all 11 of his tournaments this year and over a stroke per round in eight of those to trail only Scheffler in the category on the season. His track record at Harbour Town has left much to be desired, however, with four missed cuts in six appearances and a best finish of T25. A player whose stellar iron play has translated to success here is Conners, who is the only player to show up on both lists. He's made the cut four consecutive years, finishing no worse than T31 and a best of T4 in 2021. Although Conners (45-1 odds) continues to struggle with his short game, he's still managed six top-25s over his last six starts.
RBC Heritage: Outright Bets
Rory McIlroy (12-1)
McIlroy may not be the ideal course fit but talent can outweigh that. It's not often we see him go nine months without a PGA Tour win. McIlroy has six straight top-25s and finished third two weeks ago, and I expect him to be in contention on a week where many don't expect him to.
Sam Burns (45-1)
Burns is coming off a missed cut at the Masters, but I'm not going to take much from that as he's never played well at Augusta. Harbour Town on the other hand is a place he's shown form with a pair of top-15s over four starts. Burns also has four top-10s this year.
Sungjae Im (65-1)
Maybe this is a sucker bet, but I can't pass up Im at 65-1 in a limited field. Even in a down year, he's still 35th on Tour in SG: Off-the-tee. His ball striking has been excellent at the venue over the last three years, where he's finished T7, T21 and T13.
RBC Heritage: Other Wagers
Stephan Jaeger
Top-10 Finish: 13-2
Coming off a top-5 pick with Tommy Fleetwood last week, I'll start these set of wagers off with Jaeger, who has three top-5 finishes over his last eight starts. He hasn't played well here but is also playing better than ever before. Jaeger has the all-around game to play well at the venue.
Emiliano Grillo
Top-10 Finish: 8-1
The course history angle leads us to Grillo, who finished runner-up in 2021 and had a top-10 last year against a strong field. He has two top-10s on the year including last month in a signature event at Bay Hill.
Tony Finau
Top-5 Finish: 10-1
Some would categorize this as a down year for Finau, but he does have a top-25 in half of his events and is sixth in SG: Tee to green. He finished one back at the Houston Open despite finishing in the bottom-10 in putting, and he was fifth in approach here last year.
RBC Heritage: Head-to-Head Matchups
Akshay Bhatia (-120) over Tom Kim
The outright cold stretch continues, but I'm coming off back-to-back 2-0 weeks in matchups at least. Let's start this week off with one of the hottest golfers in Bhatia, who has three top-20s including a win over his last four starts and had a respectable T35 in his Masters debut. Kim on the other hand continues to search for his form, failing to record a top-25 in any of his last four starts. He also missed the cut here last year.
Harris English (+100) over Christiaan Bezuidenhout
English looks to be a solid target for matchups this week having made 9-of-10 cuts on the year and has made four of his last five at Harbour Town with a pair of top-25s. Bezuidenhout is playing some of the best golf of his career but is heavily reliant on his short game, which is also a strength of English. I think it would take an excellent putting week for him to outduel English here.
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