[Photo: Keyur Khamar]
Golfpocalypse is a collection of words that runs prior to each week’s PGA Tour event, mostly ABOUT that event. Reach out with your hottest takes on absolutely anything at [email protected]. We’ll publish the best emails here.
Shake off that Masters hangover, my friend, because siggy season keeps right on rolling at Hilton Head, the place where I once talked my way onto a very nice yacht for a story about … well, yachts, mostly, even though my editor wanted it to be about golf. But the thing is, once you’re on a yacht, and they even let you drive it, who cares about golf?
The answer: Your editor, when you turn in 2,000 words about a yacht.
Anyway, this tournament is sneaky great as a Masters digestif, so let’s dive into the RBC Heritage.
1. It’s actually good to have a signature event right after the Masters
There’s something a little strange about a signature event happening the week after the Masters, and I understand the idea that maybe we should take a breath with a week off or a nothing event, but I think going full signature makes sense for a few reasons. First, from the PGA Tour’s perspective, if you’ve got casual fans interested because the biggest event of the year just happened, you want to follow that with a bang. You want Scottie, you want Rory, you want Spieth, you want as many big names as possible playing in case there’s a viewership tail (Rory’s not playing this week, but you get my point). Second, Hilton Head is the perfect blend of casual and serious, which makes it a good fit right now. It’s famous for its laid-back, holidayland vibe. If you’re media, tour pros might even be nice to you, but it’s also a very cool and unique course that deserves to be featured. Without a good field, it turns into Sea Island, which is to say a beautiful oceanside course, but one that only the diehards care about. You need the top dogs at Harbour Town and you can trust the event to matter exactly as much as it needs to.
2. Rolapp Request of the week: Put a lighthouse at every tour stop
The lighthouse on 18 at Harbour Town is the single best architectural feature on any golf course in the world, and I can’t think of anything that comes close. I asked Twitter, and got some great ones, though a very common answer was the lighthouse at Turnberry. Not bad, but still a lighthouse, which proves my point. It’s hard to use the word “majestic” without sounding corny, but man, these babies are majestic. A lighthouse takes you right back to the age of sail, which I don’t know anything about, but which is evocative anyway—the minute I see a lighthouse, I become a salty sea captain in storm-tossed seas who has just spotted his salvation. Having it behind the 18th green at Harbour Town is such a cool beacon for the end of the round, too, especially because you can see it from almost anywhere. It’s so good, in fact, that I think Brian Rolapp should just stick one at TPC Twin Cities for the 3M Open as a test. Is there an ocean there? No. Does it fit in any way? Also no. But who’s going to object to a sweet lighthouse? He needs to put all his other priorities aside—you can worry about TV revenue and LIV and general success later—and get this done.
3. Scottie is out for blood
I’ve made some very good and very bad predictions lately, but I feel pretty solid about this one: Scottie figured something out over the weekend at Augusta. Unlike everyone else near the top of the leaderboard, he came on like a house on fire, and a weird inability to take advantage of the par-fives on the back is all that kept him from a third green jacket. Like last year, when he kinda sorta found his groove in fits and starts at Augusta, it feels like this is the start of a hot streak. He already won the Heritage in ’24, and I think there’s a chance he could dominate this time, too.
4. Matthew Fitzpatrick is out for blood (pudding)
Do you ever feel really convinced that a guy is going to finish first or second in an event, and it’s a massive shock when it fails to transpire, even though life has proven over and over that you can’t really predict golf results with any degree of accuracy? That was me with Fitzpatrick at Augusta. The first two days, I kept re-checking the leaderboard, thinking something must be wrong with it. He ended up just fine with a top-20 finish, but it went against my expectations and I couldn’t fathom it. Anyway, this is a lovely course for him, he won in ’23, and is already among the top 10 in career DataGolf points here and I still think we’re looking at a major season for him in 2026. I won’t accept that he’s going to end up as another English player with either one or zero majors when he should have won more. He’ll contend here.
5. The Jordan Spieth Sadness Index (JSSI)
Speaking of guys who love H-Town, folks, we are dropping the JSSI from a 5.9 to a 4.7. We are (very carefully) approaching real hope! The messaging after Augusta is that he’s striking the ball beautifully, but just can’t get any putts to drop. Now, sure, many of you will say that is a classic of the “lure me into believing before devastating me again” genre, and I understand your scepticism, but did you see him attack those greens? Do you realise the Heritage is the site of his last PGA Tour victory? My colleague Joel Beall had the audacity to say that it might be time to quit our beloved boy, but I say, double down! Now is the time to believe harder than ever! What could go wrong???
6. Hole of the Week: Plank Town
As Garrett Morrison pointed out in 2024, Harbour Town was the Dye course that Deane Beman liked so much that he hired him to design Sawgrass a few years later, but while Garrett likes the ninth hole the best, I’m a sucker for little design quirks, so I love no. 13 with its giant Mickey Mouse bunker lined with cypress planks that was actually designed by Alice Dye. (By the way, when people call these “railroad ties,” you can snootily correct them. Dye used a lot of railroad ties in his time, but these were different.) It’s kind of an easy hole, playing an average of .115 strokes under par in 2025, but most holes at Harbour Town are easy these days, so that’s really nothing against it. This is mostly an aesthetic choice on my part, and yes, it was very hard not to pick 18 just because of the lighthouse.
7. Ranking the Sponsor’s Exemptions
Boring – Tony Finau. I don’t know why, but I just feel done with Big T. I didn’t even miss Chris Vernon not saying “Tony Finau, where you be now?” in his Masters rap, and I’ve loved that specific line for years. Sure – Marco Penge. Powerful, British, odd fit for the course, but high fun potential.YES – Billy Horschel. Give that man all the opps he can handle. Unlike Finau, I miss him from the depths of my soul. Terrifying – Wyndham Clark. Don’t you dare lay a finger on that lighthouse, Wyndham!
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8. One Normie Pick, One Weird Pick
The normie pick is Scheffler, because honesty forbids me from throwing out any other name, but for the weird pick, how about Alex Noren? He’s 43, nobody talks about him anymore, but he just made the cut at the Masters, he hasn’t missed a cut in four tries at Harbour Town, he’s made six straight cuts on Tour, and he came out of nowhere to win two DPWT events last season, including the BMW Championship. He’s got at least one good result awaiting him in America this year, and a course like this is his best chance. Why not?
9. Rogue Golf Take: Justin Rose is Jim Furyk
I owe all the credit for this one to Yahoo’s Scott Pianowski, who DM’ed me this after Sunday’s final round:
It blows my mind that Justin Rose and Jim Furyk are the same exact guy! Likable but a little boring. Great ball strikers. Constantly in the hunt, but not great closers in huge events. Majors: Rose 24 Top 20s, 13 Top 5s, one win. Furyk: 23-16-1. Same guy.
Incredible stuff! As I said to Scott, the big differentiator is the Ryder Cup, where Rose has been a near-legend (16-10-3, with the ninth-most points among European golfers) and Furyk was a dismal 10-20-4. Other than that, though, these guys are major resume twins.
10. Rogue Non-Golf Take: Teach your kids to swim, but don’t ever join the swim team
Before I had kids, I idly wondered which sports I would like watching the best as a dad, and now that I have two daughters, I can tell you that they’re all fun except swimming. Swimming is an absolute f$*%ing nightmare, and I hate that it’s starting again for the year. The practices are fine, but the meet? The meet lasts approximately nine hours, it’s outdoors in extreme heat, and your kid will race twice for about 50 seconds each time. If you’re very unlucky, like me, you’ll have to watch a second child who is just as miserable and hot and bored as you are. If you’re even less lucky, you’ll have to do one of the 300 parent volunteer jobs, like timing or announcing the heats. It is truly the worst parent spectator sport imaginable, so while I encourage you to teach your kids to be very good swimmers so they don’t drown, never join the swim team. It’s too late for me, and my summers are ruined for the next 15 years.
