RBC Heritage Betting Tips: Five selections for Harbour Town glory

The Masters has a new victor in John Rahm who claimed his second major title after he recorded a fantastic four-shot victory over Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson.

Attention now turns to the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links, which has been previewed by our golf tipster Jamie Broadhurst, who has picked out five names to keep an eye on in South Carolina.

Well, what a week The Masters turned out to be, both from a viewer and a punter perspective.

Firstly, from a tipping point of view from last week’s preview, 35/1 shot Viktor Hovland finished in a tie for 7th position meaning that we returned a full place and our best result on the week. A place returns 1/5 of these odds, meaning it would have paid 7/1 for the place. If you followed the staking plan however and bet 10pts on The Masters, you would have lost 2pts. Not the worst result all in all, and it is always nice to be in the mix in a Major!

Hovland actually led the field early after a faultless first round of -7 but, as most players did, he got battered by the elements over Friday/Saturday rounds and struggled to keep up with the pace at times. Yet a string of five birdies in a row in his third round on Sunday morning meant that he went into the final round just three shots off the lead. However, with his approach play uncharacteristically poor in the fourth round, he relied too much on his scrambling which eventually proved too much for him. He shot a final round of +2 with a late birdie on 17 to grab the place.

The eventual winner was 9/1 shot Jon Rahm, who claimed his first Green Jacket and his second Major victory. Quite impressively, Rahm rallied well on his Thursday round after starting with a 4-putt double bogey on his first hole of the tournament. He managed to assert his dominance as 54-hole leader Brooks Koepka faltered away, and then none of the trailing pack could get close to him from there on out. An impressive performance, from a really talented golfer.

RBC Heritage

Players now travel three hours east to Hilton Head Island (South Carolina) where they will compete for the RBC Heritage on the Harbour Town Golf Links course at Sea Pines Resort.

Year on year the RBC Heritage follows The Masters, so for most it's seen as the hangover tournament. But that’s certainly not the case in 2023. This year the RBC Heritage has been made into a ‘designated’ event on Tour. This means that the top players are obliged to play here as per the rules set by the Tour of said designated events.

With the PGA Tour returning this week, this means that LIV players are obviously removed from the field that tee’d it up for The Masters. However, we are still left with 19 of the World’s Top 20 in the rankings this week. This tournament always attracts some of the big names due to the history of this course, however this year will be the best yet, and I cannot wait for it! Let’s dive into the course.

Harbour Town Golf Links

• Par 71, 7191 yards
• Pete Dye Design with helpings from Jack Nicklaus
• Bermuda Greens with slight Poa Trivialis overseed this time of year
• 4 x Par 3s – ranging from 192-200 yards
• 11 x Par 4s – ranging from 332-473 yards
• 3 x Par 5s – 550, 569 and 580 yards
• 8/11 Par 4s 451 yards or less
• Smaller than average greens 
• Water in play off the tee on more than 50% of the holes
• Volatile weather conditions as Course situated along the coast

Previous Winners Stats

2022 Jordan Speith -13 (playoff winner over Patrick Cantlay)

4th Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
1st Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green 
10th Strokes Gained: Approach 
9th Greens In Regulation 
5th Strokes Gained: Around the Green
60th Strokes Gained: Putting

2021 Stewart Cink -19

20th Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
1st Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green 
2nd Strokes Gained: Approach 
1st Greens In Regulation 
5th Strokes Gained: Around the Green
25th Strokes Gained: Putting

2020 Webb Simpson -22

30th Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
7th Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green 
8th Strokes Gained: Approach 
12th Greens In Regulation 
18th Strokes Gained: Around the Green
2nd Strokes Gained: Putting

2019 CT Pan -12

50th Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
11th Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green 
18th Strokes Gained: Approach 
39th Greens In Regulation 
7th Strokes Gained: Around the Green
5th Strokes Gained: Putting

2018 Satoshi Kodaira -12

6th Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
7th Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green 
7th Strokes Gained: Approach 
7th Greens In Regulation 
18th Strokes Gained: Around the Green
16th Strokes Gained: Putting

2017 Wesley Bryan -13

67th Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
6th Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green 
2nd Strokes Gained: Approach 
66th Greens In Regulation 
10th Strokes Gained: Around the Green
11th Strokes Gained: Putting

Stat averages for the previous 6 winners
Winning Score -15
29th Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
5th Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green 
8th Strokes Gained: Approach 
23rd Greens In Regulation 
10th Strokes Gained: Around the Green
20th Strokes Gained: Putting

Stats to focus on

• Strokes Gained: Off-the-tee/Driving Accuracy
• Greens In Regulation/Strokes Gained: Approach/Tee-to-Green
• Ability to scramble when needed
• Par 4 scoring (400-450 efficiency)
• Course Experience

A typical Pete Dye track, Harbour Town includes: deep pot bunkers that surround the greens and are awkwardly placed in the fairways, smaller than average greens meaning a premium will be on positional/accurate shots, especially off the tee as landing areas are narrow in places.

Looking at the course specifics. The distance is less than Tour averages, therefore bringing all kinds of players to the front and in with a chance, this can be seen by just looking at the previous six winners. This can make predicting the winner slightly trickier than usual! But there are a couple of stats/trends that I am interested in pursuing this week that can be read below.

The Strokes Gained: Off-the-tee and Driving Accuracy stats don’t really represent how much of a premium will be on positioning your tee shots in the right places this week to avoid trouble with dog legs/water and deep bunkering around the greens. So, I will be factoring driving into account this week and looking for players who constantly set opportunities up.

Accuracy is clearly a premium here, not just with the driver/tee shot, but with the irons from these fairways. Hitting these tiny greens is a must and the skill to get up and down when the players eventually miss one will be massive here. Hence the Greens In Regulation/Strokes Gained: Approach/Tee-to-Green stats being low for four of the last six winners, and then if the Greens In Regulation stats haven’t been up to scratch like Bryan’s weren’t in 2017 and Pan in 2019, strokes can be gained Around the Green in the short run off areas, so it is key to look at a player's all-around game.

I shall factor in Par 4 scoring this week. We have visited various Par 72s in the last few weeks on Tour, here we come to a Par 71 where the players will face 1 more Par 4 to what they’ve seen of late with eight out of the 11 of them falling under 451 yards, so I will be looking at the guys who are efficient at these shorter holes so far this season.

And finally, Course experience at Harbour Town has proved to be critical. Seeing this intricate track has clearly been a positive factor in previous years - we see this thru there being numerous guys that have won here multiple times and guys that perform here year in year out.

The Field

As I have stated above, this week we are presented with another stellar field. A Major championship line-up minus the LIV Tour players.

The only PGA Tour regulars that I can see that are not teeing it up here this week include Hideki Matsuyama and Aaron Wise. Wise withdrew last week based on Mental Health issues and it looks to have led to another week out for him. Matsuyama has been suffering from a neck/back injury on-and-off for some time now. The top players are allowed to miss one designated event a season, so this looks to be Matsuyama’s one that he is missing.

Having the world’s best here this week means that we have a clash of the top 3 once again: Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy. Rahm obviously got the better of the other two last week, with Scheffler finishing in the top 15 and McIlroy surprisingly missing the cut. So, they will look to turn the tables on him this week.

At the time of writing this, Scheffler opens the market as favourite at 17/2, Rahm in second at 9/1, and McIlroy is third favourite at 11/1. However, they have only played the event three times between the trio, with Scheffler never competing here before. Rahm played his sole effort here in 2020 where he finished 33rd and McIlroy has been here in 2020 and then all the way back in 2009, where he has finished 41st and 57th.

Yes, they are the best players in the world and can produce some unbelievable golf when needed, but if I backed one this week I wouldn’t be able to single out one of the three as I feel this is a course that really needs to be seen regularly and the layout needs to have suited that player for them to return and perform well on again.

From the top handful of players, the best form around Harbour Town probably goes to 14/1 shot Patrick Cantlay and 20/1 Jordan Speith. Cantlay has a record of 2-MC-3-7-3 here in five starts with a scoring average of 68: the 2021 edition where he missed the cut being one where most of the top players were blown off of this course all week. So, that leaves us with four other starts where he has come 7th place or better, a win here has eluded him so far, but with a top 15 finish last week at The Masters could he finally get it done here this week?

2022 champion Speith has a record of 1-68-54-11-12-9 with a scoring average of 69. That is being lifted by his 2019 and 2020 poor showings here. However, Speith has never missed a cut here and has never looked like missing one either. A quality last round at Augusta meant he finished inside the top 5 just may give him the boost to defend his title here this week and is my pick of the bunch for sure from the top end of the market. However, with four out of the last six winners being very much classed as outsiders, the range of odds of my selections may be quite large.

RBC Heritage Selections

Sticking the usual staking plan, I will be providing five selections that I will play 1pt each way on, meaning 10pts will be staked in total again.

All selections have been taken with Bet365 at 8 places. Good luck again all! Let’s hope for another good week.

Sam Burns

• Course Form – 39-MC-9
• Recent Form – 29-1-6-35-MC-MC

A golfer that does not need much introduction and I am really surprised that his odds are so high in the market.

Not a bad course record here with one top-10 performance coming in 2019. Since Burns’ two missed cuts at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Genesis Invitational in late February/early March - where he was highly fancied - his form has taken a massive upward curve: he topped it off with a win at the Dell Matchplay two starts ago where he defeated Cameron Young in the final.

Stats this season of 35th for Strokes Gained: Off The Tee and 9th for Strokes Gained: Putting are the real eye-catchers for this week’s course set up and the consistent success he has seen at the Valspar Championship at the Innisbrook Resort makes his case even more appealing. The Copperhead course at Innisbrook has seemed to trend very well with Harbour Town and is detailed more in the preview below for my third selection Tommy Fleetwood. 

Burns performs really well at courses that require a strong drive on every hole, whether that’s with his driver or the irons here this week. I know he already has an advantage over most of the field in this area.

Tyrrell Hatton

• Course Form – 26-39-3-MC-29
• Recent Form – 34-MC-59-2-4

A guy that is due a win in my opinion. He has been consistently knocking on that door time and time again this season in the PGA Tour and he has a habit of doing it in big fields like this one.

The stats Hatton has produced this season is just short of phenomenal: 9th for Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, 9th for Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, 11th for Strokes Gained: Approach, and 35th for Strokes Gained: Putting.

The only fault to his PGA profile is his Strokes Gained: Around the Green, but this does not worry me as I have seen him chip superbly on numerous occasions.

A decent run out at Augusta last week with a 34th, I like his chances this week at a course where he has only missed one cut in five attempts with a stroke average of 69.

Tommy Fleetwood

• Course Form – 10-MC-25
• Recent Form – 33-T52-3-27-20

This is the fiirst name I wrote down on my list this week, and here is an insight into why I did it.

Two top 25 efforts here in three attempts, with the one missed cut on the mark in 2021. Last year was his best yet when he finished in a tie for 10th place after an impressive 10 under-par weekend which included a 64 on his third round.

12th for Stokes Gained: Tee-to-Green in the PGA Tour this season and 2nd for Strokes Gained: Around the Green are the highlights on his profile for sure. But, what dragged me most towards Tommy Fleetwood was his performance at the Valspar Championship three starts ago, where he finished in a tie for 3rd position.

The Copperhead course at Innisbrook is just like Harbour Town this week: it required a demanding drive, accurate iron play to avoid lurking water hazards, and good work on green surfaces that are identical grass types.

As many as eight out of 15 champions here this week have had a previous top 10 at the Valspar. Tommy finished 17th for Strokes Gained: Putting for that week. If he repeats that here this week, he will be bang there come Sunday.

Wyndham Clark

• Course Form – 35-64-64-54
• Recent Form – 6-5-27-34-33-10

Last time out at the Corales Puntacana Championship, Wyndham Clark was as low as 8/1 in the betting as the market favourite. So, I was happy to see the 90/1 mark posted up early on bet365.

He has good experience at Harbour Town, making four out of four cuts here; not setting the world alight in doing so, however, he was as steady as ever.

Clark rarely does anything wrong and has very few weaknesses. This can be seen in his current form for sure and as well in his stats this year on tour, again nothing flash but more than enough to prove he is a consistent performer and one you know will not let you down if you want a challenger over the weekend.

He's 50th for Strokes Gained: Off-the-tee, 28th for Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, 36th for Strokes Gained: Approach, and 45th for Greens In Regulation. Tie all this in with some good finishes this year at windy coastal tracks: Sea Island (RSM Classic), the Corales Championship, and a top showing at the Valspar Championships; and I am happy to take the punt on him here.

Sam Ryder

• Course Form – MC-41-MC
• Recent Form – 3-19-44-MC-20-20-4

Time for a longshot. Not a massive one because of the quality of the field, but if you are looking for a triple-figure price on a player who is having his best season of his life, form-wise, then bet on Sam Ryder this week at 125/1.

There is no beating around the bush here. His 176th and 119th rankings for Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green is majorly below average for sure. However, he ranks 39th for Scrambling and 2nd for Strokes Gained: Putting, and topped all putting statistics at the Valspar Championships with the same green complexes.

He seemed to have fixed up his Tee-to-Green game last time out at the Valero Texas Open where he ranked 17th in the field, so I am hoping he is on the up with his longer clubs. If he can be slightly above average Off-the-Tee then I am confident he can at least give us a bold showing this week.