The week after the Masters is a curious thing on the PGA Tour. The sport’s focal point shifts from Georgia pines and glass-smooth greens to the tidal creeks and live oaks of Hilton Head, and a field that spent seven months working towards Augusta is asked to show up again and play another signature event as if the emotional landing gear had been fully retracted. Some players embrace it. Others, politely, do not. The RBC Heritage has always had to negotiate with that reality, and the 2026 edition is no different.
Rory McIlroy confirmed on Monday that he will skip the Heritage and take a couple of weeks off before returning to competitive golf. Given what he has just done at Augusta — only the fourth player in history to win back-to-back green jackets — nobody is arguing. The back-to-back champion has earned the right to sit in a garden somewhere and let the fact of his own achievement catch up with him. The tournament will survive his absence. What it loses in marquee draw it may gain in genuine uncertainty.
Scheffler arrives with something to prove
Scottie Scheffler shot a bogey-free 70 on Sunday at Augusta and came up one shot short. For the world number one, that is a result to carry rather than celebrate. His record at Harbour Town is excellent — a win in 2022, multiple top-tens since — and the golf course tends to reward the shot-maker over the bomber. Scheffler is the best shot-maker in the field, full stop. If there is a recent Masters runner-up who is likely to respond with a statement the following week, it is him.
Harbour Town is short by modern standards and narrower than almost any course the Tour visits. Average driving distance matters less here than precision into small, sloped greens. Scheffler’s approach statistics have been the best on Tour for three years running. The expectation, not for the first time, is that he is the man to beat.
Young, Hatton, and the Masters hangover question
Cameron Young tied for the Masters lead entering the final round and faded to a share of fifth. His Saturday 65 was one of the week’s best rounds. Whether he can steady himself quickly enough to compete at Harbour Town will say something about where he is in his development. Young has never had a strong record at Heritage — his game is better suited to wider venues — but momentum is a currency in professional golf, and he has some.
Tyrrell Hatton’s tie for fourth at Augusta was his best major finish. The Englishman has always been a good fit for Harbour Town, where the ability to curve the ball both ways off the tee is a genuine weapon. A motivated Hatton on a course that suits him is a dangerous proposition, and he has admitted publicly that winning a signature event is one of the ambitions he has left.
Russell Henley, the other player inside the top five at Augusta, lives on Hilton Head in the off-season and has made Harbour Town a personal project. His putting ran hot all week at the Masters and there is no obvious reason it should cool down now that he is on home turf.
The course has not changed, and that matters
Pete Dye’s Harbour Town layout has been quietly immune to the distance creep that has forced so many courses to add tees and bunkers. The 18th, with its lighthouse backdrop and the finish into a crosswind off Calibogue Sound, remains one of the best closing holes in American golf precisely because nothing about it has been updated. The same is true of the whole property. You cannot overpower Harbour Town. You have to shape shots into the corners of greens that are smaller than the ones you just played at Augusta, and you have to do it while the breeze off the water gives the ball ideas.
That is why the winners here tend to be the same kind of golfer year after year. Creative iron players. Good putters. Men who can hold a two-yard fade on a six-iron. Not, historically, men who average 320 off the tee and hit everything straight. The Heritage winners list over the past decade — Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Burns, Morikawa, Spieth — tells the story.
What to watch for
The cut line will almost certainly sit around even par, which is itself a useful read on the conditions. If it is lower than that, the wind is down and scoring will be aggressive. If it creeps to a shot or two over, the tournament will be won by someone scrambling beautifully rather than hitting it close. The Sunday leader rarely comes from more than four back, because Harbour Town does not allow a Sunday 63 — the course simply will not give up that many shots — so whoever is within striking distance through 54 holes is in play.
The sentimental pick is Henley, the local who has played here since he was a boy. The smart pick is Scheffler, for all the obvious reasons. The dark-horse pick, for this observer, is Hatton — a player with the right shot shape and the right chip on his shoulder after a Masters week that felt close without quite being close enough. The field is deep enough that half a dozen others could win, and Harbour Town will tell us which half a dozen by Saturday evening.
The 2026 RBC Heritage begins Thursday. The marquee name is missing, the Masters champion is on a beach somewhere, and the tournament is better for the opening it creates.