HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA | On the road into the Harbour Town Golf Links – appropriately named Lighthouse Lane – a series of banners honoring the champions of the RBC Heritage through the years greets visitors.
Images of Nicklaus, Watson, Miller, Norman, Faldo, Langer, Stewart, Love and others flutter in the breeze, reminders of the moments and memories that have transpired on the edge of the Calibogue Sound over the previous 50 years.
In so many ways, the RBC Heritage is all that the Masters is not.
The Masters is the greatest golf tournament in the world, enormous in scope and impact, framed by budding dogwoods and the most instantly recognizable stage in the game.
The Heritage, as the locals call it, is small, unassuming and quaint by modern PGA Tour standards. Spanish moss, alligators and bicycle riders are part of the scene. Spectators aren’t called patrons. Most of them are called tourists.
And it is the perfect event in the perfect place for the week after the Masters.
“Augusta is the crescendo of the early part of the year and then you come here and it’s the anti-Augusta in a good way. Augusta is great. This is also great. Just a different kind of great,” said Stewart Cink, a two-time winner at Harbour Town who is making his 20th career start here this week.
There are plenty of tournament directors who would run away from the week after Augusta on the tour schedule, understanding the built-in decompression time many of the game’s top players want. Not Steve Wilmot, the longtime tournament director at Harbour Town.
“We’ve embraced being the week after the Masters,” Wilmot said.
It wasn’t long ago that the Heritage was down to its final hours, almost literally. The tournament was staged without a sponsor in 2011 and the prospects for finding a big-name sponsor were bleak until local officials, including then South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley got involved, eventually persuading RBC and Boeing to step in.
Together, the two sponsors – and a community that loves its golf tournament – have transformed the RBC Heritage. At its essence, the event is as much about the place as it is the people who play for the $6.9 million purse.
While Clemson football has won two recent national championships and the Tigers’ rivalry with the University of South Carolina remains at the fiery center of sports in this state, the golf tournament has an estimated annual economic impact of $96 million based on a study done by Clemson and USC Beaufort, making it the biggest sports event in the state from an economic standpoint.
Yet, it still feels small by design. Harbour Town, tucked into the Sea Pines Plantation on one end of the shoe-shaped island, features the iconic red-and-white striped lighthouse. But that (and some serious yachts) are as showy as it gets here.
“It’s so important to the community,” Wilmot said. “You have the cable guy working with the telephone guy working with the electrician. They’re working together instead of pointing fingers. It’s a pride factor here.
“If you were here a month or six weeks ago, it seems like everybody is painting their houses, planting flowers. Not only at golf courses but in the communities. They’re proud to have this event.”
It’s a place where the concession stands are selling two cookies (one called the Peanut Butter Putter, the other named “Dye-abolical Delight”) chosen from a local baking contest with a local charity benefiting.
More than a year ago, when the PGA Tour was still piecing together its new-look schedule, switching the Players Championship to March and the PGA Championship to May, Wilmot was asked by the local school system if he had tournament dates for 2019. The local schools close during Heritage week to help out during the event.
Wilmot knew the tour typically waits until tournament week or just after before providing next year’s dates but he asked anyway.
“I sent out an e-mail and said just out of curiosity, is there any chance you might have our dates in ’19? Here they are. I reached back out and said am I OK to run with these dates? They said yes but don’t tell the other 20 tournaments that don’t have their dates,” Wilmot said.
For players in the Masters, it’s a three-hour drive from Augusta to Hilton Head. For those who didn’t play the Masters, it’s a spot to jump-start their spring schedule on a course that demands precision more than power.
It’s a place where the concession stands are selling two cookies (one called the Peanut Butter Putter, the other named “Dye-abolical Delight”) chosen from a local baking contest with a local charity benefiting.
On Tuesday afternoon, the line of youngsters waiting to putt with the tour pros on Harbour Town’s practice green stretched toward the nearby first fairway. Local residents sit in lawn chairs in their backyards watching the tournament go by.
It’s not unusual to see a player riding a bike around the island or listening to live music under the trees near the Harbour Town marina in the evening.
“This is an intimate tournament. We play a lot of big ballparks these days. It’s not just the way you play the course but where the fans are, how close they can get to your shots. The size of everything, the grandstands, it’s large,” Cink said.
“It’s nice to come here where a lot of times they’re just 10 or 15 feet from the green and a lot of times they can see which way the grain is going on your putt.”
On Sunday afternoon when the final putt falls, a makeshift armada of boats floating just off the 18th green will sound their horns in celebration.
It’s not just the winner they’re celebrating.