The RBC Heritage opens this week at Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, with an expanded field of 82 qualifiers for the fourth Signature Event of the 2025 PGA Tour season. The tournament is the 58th edition, and every one of them has been played at Harbour Town.
The field includes 53 players fresh off their run at the first major and 10 entrants who got in only because of victories in 2025. The PGA Tour also reallocated exemptions from the canceled The Sentry, which changed the size of the event this season. The tournament was originally set to host 72 golfers, but if any of the 10 players added through the exemption adjustment withdraw before the opening round, they will not be replaced.
That makes the opening round at Harbour Town more than a stop after Augusta. It is the start of a stretch of three Signature Events across four weeks, and none of those tournaments will have a cut. For players trying to keep pace in a condensed part of the schedule, every round matters from the first tee shot on Thursday.
The course itself is playing differently too. Harbour Town Golf Links went through a six-month process to replace all grasses, using the same strains that previously covered the property. The Bermudagrass greens were restored to the size and specifications of Pete Dye’s original work in 1969, and they now average 3,700 square feet. New hole locations were derived from fresh contouring, and new tees on the par-4 first, sixth and 18th holes stretched the course by 30 yards to 7,243 yards, with par remaining 71.
Even with the renovation, Harbour Town still asks for a very specific kind of golf. Two of the course’s three par 5s are on the outward nine, overseeded Bermudagrass rough remains 1¼ inches tall, and distance off the tee ranks among the lowest on average annually compared with other measured courses. Accuracy on approach remains more of a premium than usual, which is why the tournament so often rewards the players who can keep the ball in play and control it into the greens.
The Masters is usually a transition point for many players before they move on to Hilton Head Island, but this year that handoff leads directly into a field shaped by the cancellation of The Sentry and the tour’s exemption adjustments. The result is a Heritage that feels both familiar and slightly sharper around the edges, with no cut to slow the pace and no room for an off week once the week begins.
For Harbour Town, the new look is still built around the same old test. For the players, the next four weeks will tell whether that test favors the same names again or gives the larger field a brief opening to break through.
