Pin Sheet: RBC Heritage

A guide to success at Harbour Town

Note: The Ideal Player Profile and Top Fits this week were generated on Wednesday before the tournament began, and all predictions and analysis are based on pre-tournament data. Future editions will be published before the event begins.

Thanks for checking out the very first Pin Sheet.

This project is all about using data to see golf a little differently. We’ll post these weekly to give you a new way to look at the leaderboard and hopefully make following the game a little more fun.

Course Conditions

The Ideal Player Profile

• SG: Off the Tee – 0.503

• SG: Approach – 0.782

• SG: Around the Green – 0.424

• SG: Putting – 0.636

New to strokes gained or how we build these profiles?
Check out this quick explainer from our Tee to Green series to get up to speed before diving in.

Harbour Town Golf Links, in Hilton Head, South Carolina, is a course for the ball-strikers. Accuracy is king here, and a strong week on the Bermuda greens is key to success. The par-71 course is not particularly long, at a tournament length of 7100 yards, and instead prioritizes shotmaking and control rather than pure power.

Pinseekers of the Week

Here are the players in the field who most closely match the Harbour Town profile, with a score closer to 1 indicating a better fit:

1. Lucas Glover – 0.4992
2. Sepp Straka – 0.4958
3. Bud Cauley – 0.4852
4. Scottie Scheffler – 0.4786
5. Patrick Cantlay – 0.4765
6. Collin Morikawa – 0.4707
7. Nick Taylor – 0.4704
8. Billy Horschel – 0.4540
9. Russell Henley – 0.4506
10. Aaron Rai – 0.4437

As expected, iron play dominates this list, with nine players ranked in the top 30 on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Approach.

Lucas Glover leads the model this week thanks to his accuracy off the tee and a good enough short game to be a threat at Harbour Town.

Collin Morikawa and Sepp Straka are nearly automatic inclusions in any list that prioritizes iron play, ranking first and third on tour in SG: Approach, respectively.

Bud Cauley is quietly putting together a very solid season, including three top 10s in his last three starts, and his game is a solid fit for the course.

Scottie Scheffler is always a threat, and this week is no different. His outstanding +1.07 SG: Approach and quality all-around play make him a serious contender in Hilton Head this week.

Patrick Cantlay continues to be a great fit for this course, and the results back it up. He’s finished in the top three at Harbour Town in each of the past three years. With an extremely well-rounded game and a strong +0.77 SG: Approach, the model sees him as a legitimate threat again this week.

Nick Taylor and Aaron Rai are both strong across the board, though Taylor’s irons seem to have cooled slightly after an exceptional start to the season, so treat him with caution. Rai remains a steady course-fit candidate with no glaring weaknesses.

Russell Henley is someone I’m watching very closely this week. He has the highest SG: Putting among the top fits at +0.53, and still ranks 14th on tour in SG: Approach, a solid combination for this course setup.

Finally, Billy Horschel makes the list based on some hot putting weeks lately and a decent approach profile. That said, I would be wary of him this week. While the fit is decent on paper, his upside feels limited compared to others on this list, and he has by far the lowest SG: Approach of the top fits at +0.28.

Draws and Fades

The Pinseekers list highlights the ten best course fits based on the model. This section looks at the next players who didn’t quite make the top ten but still bring something worth watching. These are the draws: potential sleepers with upside. We’ll also take a look at the fades: a few players near the bottom of the fit rankings.

Draws:

Despite not making the list of best fits, I like the chances of Shane Lowry, JJ Spaun, and Justin Rose this week.

Lowry ranks sixth on tour in SG: Approach and is well-rounded in the other three categories, making him a solid fit in the mold of Sepp Straka this week.

Spaun is worth a mention for his iron play alone, ranking fifth in SG: Approach despite a lackluster short game this season.

Rose is noteworthy for his excellent putting stats and makes my list of sleepers due to that and his strong iron play, though his play off the tee is a potential cause for concern.

Fades:

I would steer clear of Max Homa, Cam Young, and Tony Finau this week.

While it may seem like Homa is turning a corner with his impressive T12 finish at The Masters, it seems more likely that he simply had an outlier week, finishing with an SG: Approach of +1.20 at Augusta compared to his season-long average of -0.84, a bad recipe for success at Harbour Town.

Cam Young suffers from a similar but not as extreme issue, with an SG: Approach of -0.55, and isn’t strong enough elsewhere to make up for it.

Tony Finau is strong off the tee and around the greens, but only average with his irons and very poor with the putter, which drags him down on a course that prioritizes both weaknesses in his game this season.

Finishing Out

That’s everything on this week’s Pin Sheet. As a reminder, this model isn’t here to pick winners, it’s here to spotlight the players whose games line up best with what the course demands. Sometimes that’s the usual suspects, but sometimes it leads us to unexpected names like Bud Cauley or Aaron Rai. Either way, the goal is the same: to help you understand why certain players are set up to succeed and give you a clearer picture of the course itself.

Whether you’re here for the picks, the insights, or just a new way to follow the game, I’m glad you’re along for the ride.

Good luck this week and see you next time.