The field for this week’s RBC Heritage will have heaved a collective big sigh of relief when they discovered money-machine and now Masters champion Scottie Scheffler is taking a week off.
The world No.1, a 16/1 winner for us last week, will need a computer to work out the winnings from that phenomenal four-victory-in-six week golden stretch but the $2.7m Masters booty lifts the big American past the $10m mark for 2022. And much more to come as the year has hardly started
As Tiger Woods hijacked the media coverage, as he always does but more so now that he has the sympathy vote and has become Mr Nice Guy, Scheffler won’t get the credit due to him coming in as the hottest golfer on the planet. Away from the Woods circus, Master Scheff was able to concentrate better on-course and off and it wasn’t until he three-stabbed it from 5ft on the final hole that the nerves got to him.
By then the job was done and he was still able to win by three from the fast-finishing Rory McIlroy who came through with a best-of-the-week 64. Second was Rory’s highest Augusta finish in 15 attempts but a low no-pressure last-round score from a player not in contention means little and the Career Grand Slam dream must wait another year. He is not playing this week.
As for Woods, the bottom line of taking 301 blows - 23 behind the winner -means that he still has a way to go before he can put himself seriously in the mix. He made no promises to play anywhere, and that includes two American majors, but nothing is going to stop him going back to his favourite course, St Andrews, where he won two Opens, for its 150th anniversary Championship.
Travelling on from Augusta to Hilton Head are two who shared third in the Masters, Shane Lowry and Cameron Smith, as well Collin Morikawa (5th), Corey Conners (T6) Justin Thomas (T8) and Sungjae Im (T8) all top-ten finishers. They all have obvious chances but facing them is a far different task on the Harbour Town Links, a fiddly 7121-yard 71, created by Sawgrass designer Pete Dye with input from Jack Nicklaus.
The winner has to be a dead-eye driver because if your tee shot is not in the right spot, you path to the green is likely to be blocked by overhanging trees. The small contoured greens are also a challenge and this is where I put up a 175/1 winner in Stewart Cink on my dream GM Online debut.
Cink, now 48 and winner of our Open in 2009, had already landed two Heritages in the distant past and arrived straight from an eye-catching 12th at Augusta, a lead-up performance he hasn’t replicated this year. He missed the cut last week, though not before he had holed in one at the 16th on Friday.
But go back a few weeks to when he posted a seventh at the Valspar which, aligned to his three course victories, means I can put him up again - and like last year he’s at three-figure odds. This is a stronger Heritage than usual with five of the world’s top ten, Morikawa, Smith, Patrick Cantlay, Thomas and Dustin Johnson, under orders. They inevitably head the betting in a 14/1 the field tournament with JT and Open champion Morikawa topping the list at that price.
Morikawa is preferred. He came from nowhere for a smash-and-grab 67 that leapfrogged him up to solo fifth on Sunday and he has Heritage form, seventh to Cink last year.
It was a no-pressure fifth as he was out of the spotlight all week and Bernhard Langer showed when he won Masters and Heritage in consecutive weeks in 1985 that a big week at the Masters does not preclude a quality effort the following week.
Power off the tee is of little consequence this week and medium-hitter Webb Simpson should do much better on a course he knows so well, having broken the 72-hole record with a 22-under-par 266 in 2020. He has posted seven top-tens there out of 12 visits. Surgery on a herniated disc in his neck has held the North Carolinan back but 35th at the Masters didn’t do him justice as a bad final round undid all the good of the first three. Taking the 35/1 carries risks but he would be nothing near that price if anywhere his 2020 course blitz.
He plays an ideal game for this test as does local hero Kevin Kisner, the Match Play runner-up who looks overpriced at 45/1 bearing in mind that his game was in good nick before that at the Sony (3rd) and Players Championship (4th). We need a hot putter and an educated driver this week and they don’t come much more educated than Kisner. Beaten in a 2015 Heritage play-off, he can go one better in his home State given his fine run of form.
We can forget about his 44th at Augusta, understandably posting his worst score when Tiger, his groupies and the world’s media were his playing partners in round three. This “chess game” golf on a shorter course looks much more up quiet-man Kevin’s alley.
Shane Lowry and Matt Fitzpatrick, both with Heritage form (Lowry third in 2019, Fitzpatrick fourth last year) look the pick of the Europeans. Joint-third at Augusta, Lowry showed great touch and a fine array of four-letter adjectives when things weren’t going right, Fitzpatrick looked better than he scored but his game is better suited to Harbour Town, so while expecting him to go close, odds of 22/1 and less seem to overstate the chances of a golfer yet to open his PGA Tour account.
Tyrrell Hatton is another Brit who has done well there (3rd to Simpson two years ago) but his Masters showing, stone-cold last of the weekend qualifiers and 17 over par was such a shambles that it’s hard to visualise him taking a hand.
Canadian Conners comes into the conversion after placing third in the Match Play and sixth at the Masters and he, too, comes with course recommendation as he shared sixth spot with Fitzpatrick last year. And I also like Si Woo Kim as an each-way bet. He went down only after a play-off four years ago and looked a top-ten finisher at Augusta until it all went pear-shaped on Sunday.
Weather-wise it’s looking like a wet weekend, Saturday in particular, but dry for the first two rounds, temperatures in the mid-20s and no savage winds.
RBC Heritage Golf Betting Tips 2022
- 2pts each-way Kevin Kisner at 45/1
- 2pts each-way Collin Morikawa at 14/1
- 1pt each-way Webb Simpson at 35/1
- 1pt each-way Corey Conners at 28/1
- 0.5pt each-way Stewart Cink at 110/1
- 0.5pt each-way Si Woo Kim at 55/1
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