PGA Course Preview for the 2025 RBC Heritage: Scouting the Routing

Ian McNeill's free comprehensive course preview of Harbour Town Golf Links for the 2025 RBC Heritage. Ian examines the course, giving key metrics and trends to help make informed decisions on the PGA betting board.

Things continue to move at a breakneck pace on the PGA Tour, as just four days after crowning our first Major Champion of 2025, another $20 million is up for grabs in the sixth signature event of the year.

The battleground on which this lavish prize pool will be contested is one of the most iconic in the sport. Hilton Head Golf Links has played host to the RBC Heritage since 1969, and its iconic seaside design holds as essential a place in Pete Dye's catalog as TPC Sawgrass, Whistling Straits, or Kiawah Island. It's as close to a throwback week as you'll ever find on the PGA Tour, and if you're sick of the bomb-and-gouge approach taken by modern golfers, Harbour Town is the perfect venue.

This piece will serve to break down every key trend and statistic I'm weighing to project a player's viability in the outright market and set our readers up to make the crucial decisions necessary on pre-week betting boards. Without further ado, here is my comprehensive scouting report on Harbour Town Golf Links and the 2025 RBC Heritage!

The Golf Course

Harbour Town Golf Links - Par 71; 7,213 yards

Past Champions

• 2024 - Scottie Scheffler (
• 2023 - Matt Fitzpatrick (-17) over Jordan Spieth (playoff)
• 2022 - Jordan Spieth (-13) over Patrick Cantlay (playoff)
• 2021 - Stewart Cink (-19) over Emiliano Grillo/Harold Varner III
• 2020 - Webb Simpson (-22) over Abraham Ancer
• 2019 - C.T. Pan (-12) over Matt Kuchar
• 2018 - Satoshi Kodaira (-12) over Si Woo Kim (playoff)

Harbour Town by the Numbers (Off-The-Tee):

• Average Fairway Width -- 32.4 yards; 16th narrowest on the PGA Tour
• Average Driving Distance -- 275.1 yards; Second lowest on Tour
• Driving Accuracy -- 61.4%; 14th highest on Tour
• Missed Fairway Penalty -- 0.25; Second lowest on Tour
  • Rough Penalty -- 0.13; Second lowest on Tour
  • Non-Rough Penalty -- 0.35; Seventh lowest on Tour
  • Missed FW Penalty Fraction -- 3.5%; 16th lowest on Tour
• Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee Difficulty: (-0.056); Second toughest on Tour

If you've been a frequent browser of my course previews, you'll have likely heard the words "short," "positional," and "club-down" more times than you can count. Venues like Sedgefield, Wai'alae, and Innisbrook often receive the label of the "positional track that largely takes driver out of players' hands," but perhaps nowhere on Tour is this set of descriptors more appropriate than at Harbour Town.

As evidenced by the second-lowest driving distance on the PGA Tour (275.1 yards), Pete Dye's combination of sharp doglegs and tight, tree-lined corridors makes it difficult for even the straightest drivers of the ball to take the aggressive route on many of these Par 4s. And with only three two-shotters on the property measuring over 460 yards, a player's driving strategy at Harbour Town often boils down to taking whatever club can carry you to the furthest point within the dogleg and accepting the mid-iron approach shot the designer intended you to have over 50 years ago.

This ultra-conservative off-the-tee test has resulted in a bevy of sub-par drivers making a career around these eclectic links. Since 2014, only two RBC Heritage Champions have gained more than two shots on the field off of the tee, and in 2017 and 2019, Wesley Bryan and C.T. Pan lost a combined 4.2 shots with their tee balls and went on to triumph. Elite driving is as deemphasized as you'll ever see on the PGA Tour and rates out well below the Tour average in predictiveness compared to the other three strokes gained metrics.

Despite this overall lack of year-to-year correlation between elite driving and success at Harbour Town, it will still be important to identify players who have at least some degree of aptitude on this particular style of driving track. I'll primarily be looking to historic off-the-tee splits at Harbour Town specifically, as well as a few other corollaries that feature a bevy of club-down opportunities and moderate penalty fractions (TPC Sawgrass, Colonial, TPC River Highlands, etc.).

Harbour Town by the Numbers (Approach):

• Green in Regulation Rate -- 59.9%; Seventh lowest on the PGA Tour
• Strokes Gained: Approach Difficulty: (-0.028); Eighth toughest on Tour
• Key Proximity Ranges:
  • 175-200 yards (accounts for 25.0% of historical approach shots)
  • 150-175 yards (22.7%)
  • 125-150 yards (17.8%)

With many players bottlenecked into similar landing areas off of the tee, the second shot takes on even more significance around Harbour Town compared to a typical week. The top five finishers at the Heritage have gained an average of 4.3 shots to the field with their iron play (37% of their total strokes), and seven of the last eight champions in Hilton Head have gained at least 4.8 strokes on approach.

In terms of the key proximity ranges to monitor, Harbour Town is decidedly a short/middle iron course. Nearly 50% of historical approach shots have come from 150-200 yards, and a season-low 14% of second shots come from beyond 200 yards (less than half of what we saw last week).

As a result, I'll be narrowing much of my focus onto the most elite performers within this specific range of approach skills in addition to our typical iron metrics we lean on every week (SG: Approach, GIRs Gained, and Birdie Chances Created). Notably, each of the last five Heritage Champions came into the week riding some recent momentum with their iron play:

• Scottie Scheffler was fresh off of his second Masters title and riding some of the best ball-striking form we've seen in the last decade (+8.6, +9.3, +12.8, +8.3 over his last four starts)
• Matt Fitzpatrick had just recorded the best iron week of his season the prior week at Augusta (+4.16)
• Jordan Spieth had gained 6.2 shots on Approach in his last PGA Tour start heading into the Heritage (2022 Valero Texas Open)
• Stewart Cink was riding a run of five straight positive iron weeks heading into the 2021 Heritage (most notably gaining 3.92 strokes on Approach at the Masters and 7.1 the month before at PGA National).
• Webb Simpson had to deal with a four-month layoff for COVID, but entering the pandemic, he was averaging 3.84 strokes gained per tournament with his irons over his last five starts.

Harbour Town by the Numbers (Around the Greens):

• Scrambling Percentage -- 62.2%; 4.8% below Tour Average 
• Sand Save Difficulty -- (+0.013); 16th easiest on Tour
• Up-and-Down Difficulty (Fairway) -- (+0.036); Sixth easiest on Tour
• Up-and-Down Difficulty (Rough) -- (+0.080); Fourth easiest on Tour
• SG: Around the Green Difficulty: (+0.044); Fourth easiest on Tour

This week's broadcast factoid comes in the fact that Harbour Town features the second smallest green complexes on the PGA Tour (after Pebble Beach). However, with some of the easiest green complexes to scramble around (and a distinct lack of wind compared to Pebble), I won't be placing nearly the same amount of emphasis on the green play in Hilton Head.

In each of the last seven Heritage iterations, we've seen multiple top five finishers attain that position despite rating out below average around the green, and since 2018, we've seen three players don the Tarton Jacket whilst ranking outside the top 40 in Scrambling.

While short-game stats do rank well below approach play and putting in terms of leaderboard correlation, there is one scrambling metric to be aware of when flushing out your player pool. Bunker play has been an extremely important indicator for success at Harbour Town, as four of the last five winners of the Heritage ranked inside the top 12 that week in Sand Saves, and since 2019, over 80% of top-ten finishers have rated out above the field average from the bunkers.

The fairway and rough cuts around Hilton Head are some of the more benign scrambling surfaces on the PGA Tour -- each ranking inside the bottom 10 in up-and-down difficulty in eight of the last nine seasons. Even famously poor chippers like Stewart Cink and Emiliano Grillo have found a degree of success here by utilizing putter from off of these greenside surrounds, so outside of a small weight on bunker play, I won't be focusing any added energy in projecting the best short-game commodities in this field. Instead, that added weight will be allocated to this preview's final facet.

Harbour Town by the Numbers (Putting):

• Average Green Size: 3,700 sq. feet
• Agronomy -- Poa Trivialis overseed
• Stimpmeter: 11.5
• 3-Putt Percentage: 2.1% (0.9% below Tour Average)
• Strokes Gained: Putting Difficulty: (-0.003); 12th toughest on Tour

Once players find themselves safely aboard the second-smallest set of putting complexes on the PGA Tour, the task becomes a lot more familiar than the rather eclectic test we've outlined in the first three sections. At just 3,700 square feet on average (and not known for an excessive amount of slope or undulation), Hilton Head isn't a golf course where players will have to exhibit elite touch from long range with their putters.

Instead, I'll be focused on the best putters in the field from 5-15 feet, and unlike many weeks on Tour, the data set available simply by filtering for the last two months is a sufficient sample size to measure putting acumen on these greens. From PGA West to TPC Scottsdale, Sawgrass, Innisbrook, Memorial Park, and TPC San Antonio, poa overseeds are nothing new to PGA Tour players in 2025. I will be drawing much of my putting data from these short-term samples, as well as long-term splits at Harbour Town itself.

Key Stats Roundup (in order of importance):

• Approach Play -- particular emphasis on proximity/strokes gained splits from 150-200 yards
• Recent putting form on the countless Poa trivialis overseeds we've seen to this point in 2024:
  • TPC San Antonio, Memorial Park, Innisbrook, TPC Sawgrass, TPC Scottsdale, PGA West
• Historic Driving Acumen on similarly positional golf courses
  • Harbour Town, Colonial, TPC River Highlands, TPC Sawgrass, Sedgefield, Wai'alae, etc.
• Sand Saves/Greenside Bunker Proximity

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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod

2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 Units

Total Winnings: +311.229 Units

Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36

H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022

The Sunday Shortlist

Before the odds come out on Monday morning, here are two to three names I’ve identified as significant targets upon my initial research.

Viktor Hovland

Viktor Hovland made his 4th birdie in a row in style. pic.twitter.com/GPXRPujyyL

— Golf on CBS ⛳ (@GolfonCBS) April 11, 2025

He continues to play down his progression: recently calling his swing a 6/10 despite entering the weekend at the Masters inside the top 10 on the leaderboard, but I'm beginning to become a believer that Viktor Hovland's darkest days are behind him.

Viktor gained another four strokes on approach at this year's Masters: increasing his per-round average to 1.33 since the start of the Florida Swing, and while his driver has been a bit of a hit-and-miss commodity (especially at the Tour's longer venues), his two best driving performances of the season have come around 6,900-yard Pebble Beach (+1.7)  and one of my closest Harbour Town driving comps in Innisbrook (+2.0).

Couple this recent success on shorter, club-down venues with the historic ball-striking success he's had in Hilton Head through two appearances (+6.0 Strokes Gained OTT; +7.1 on Approach), and I see plenty of reason of be optimistic about Viktor's chances this week.

Hovland's two recent spike results also underline a sudden turnaround he's had on the greens: gaining 2.7 strokes putting around the diabolical greens of Augusta National, and 7.4 strokes in his win at the the Valspar Championship (on similarly over-seeded greens to what he'll see at Harbour Town).

Although been one of the trickier projections in the sport over the last 12+ months, Vik has given us enough recent signs to take a shot at the 40-1s currently available on BookMaker. I've certainly been burned in the past on Hovland's road to redemption, but I remain incredibly confident in one thing: If he puts up another quality performance this week, it'll be a long time before we see a price this good beside Viktor Hovland's name.

Sepp Straka

Phenomenal tee shot and birdie putt by Sepp Straka on 13. 🤌

📺 Golf Channel | @TheAmexGolf pic.twitter.com/1lm5d7E1Is

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) January 19, 2025

Despite a disappointing missed cut at Augusta National, Sepp Straka continued to display a profile that not only vaulted him into conversations as a Major Championship Contender, but one that is also tailor-made for his best opportunity at a Signature win. Straka gained a whopping 3.4 strokes on approach in Rounds 1 and 2 at the Masters (ranking fifth in per-round average), and hit 75% of his fairways for the week.

This combination of elite iron play and precision off of the tee vaults Sepp well into my top 10 in terms of winning probabilities at Harbour Town, and when isolating for those two metrics, only Collin Morikawa can boast a comparable run of recent form.

While some elite strikers in this field can boast better singular ball--striking performances thus far in 2o25, nobody (including Scheffler or Morikawa), can match the consistency of the Austrian. In Straka's last 12 starts on Tour (dating back to the 2024 RSM), he's managed to record an iron performance of at least 3.5 strokes gained in ten of those 12.

Sepp also ranks 1st in my Weighted Proximity model from 150-200 yards, and gained strokes off of the tee in each of his most recent starts at my comparable driving courses:

• +1.3 at TPC Sawgrass
• +2.5 at PGA National
• +0.2 at Innisbrook's Copperhead Course
• +3.1 at PGA West's Stadium Course
• +2.2 at last year's RBC Heritage

With finishes of fifth and third already to his name in two of the last three iterations of the RBC Heritage, there isn't much need for an imagination when envisioning Straka's opportunity this week. My numbers continue to point to him as one of 2025's premier breakouts, and at prices in the 40-1 range on outright odds boards, I'll gladly jump on this week as one of his best chances to date of confirming that ascendency.

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