Is There Any Correlation From Augusta National to Harbour Town?

AUGUSTA, Ga. – It was back in 1983 when the RBC Heritage – then called the Sea Pines Heritage – moved to the post-Masters week on the schedule, which made perfect sense for a few different reasons.

First, it was an easy road trip from Augusta to Hilton Head, just about 130 miles to keep players competing in the same region of the country. And second, the laid-back atmosphere provided the perfect antidote for those who’d just spent an entire week grinding their way around Augusta National.

That first year, Fuzzy Zoeller parlayed a T-20 result at the major into a win at Harbour Town. The next year, Nick Faldo went from T-15 at Augusta to the winner’s circle. And the year after that, Bernhard Langer completed a timely double, claiming the green jacket before pairing it with a tartan variety.

Of course, nothing from that history lesson teaches us anything of value when it comes to betting on this week’s edition of the event.

For that, I dug into some more recent history.

Three years ago, the RBC Heritage became an elevated event, then a designated event and now a PGA Tour signature event – all of which means the same thing. It’s a limited-field, no-cut tournament for the PGA Tour’s best players, even if some of them – like Masters champion Rory McIlroy decide not to show.

Is there a correlation, though, between Masters results and RBC Heritage performance?

Should we back those who contended in Augusta? Or fade them? Do the players who didn’t compete in the Masters have an advantage? Or should we stay away?

Let’s take a look at the top-10 on the last three RBC leaderboards and what they did in the previous week, starting with 2023:

2023 RBC Heritage Leaderboard + Masters Finish

We shouldn’t expect to find conclusive, definitive correlations between these two events, but the fact that a half-dozen players in the top-10 had finished inside the top-16 the previous week speaks volumes, although by the same token, it similarly offers some clues that only one of those six was better than ninth.

Now let’s check out 2024:

2024 RBC Heritage Leaderboard + Masters Finish

Once again, we see plenty of correlations here – although admittedly different ones than the previous year. Perhaps simply the numbers game would suggest some overlap between these two events, but the fact that players finishing 1-2-3 at Augusta were all inside the top-10 the following week tells a bit different story than 2023, but similarly suggests that form can indeed carry over.

OK, now let’s move on to 2025:

2025 RBC Heritage Leaderboard + Masters Finish

Well, so much for those correlations. Scheffler remains the ultimate outlier, able to travel from one event to the next and continue playing high-level golf on a weekly basis, but nobody else in last year’s top-10 at the RBC was even inside the top-20 at the previous week’s Masters.

So, there you have it. Three years of being a signature event and three years of completely different carryovers from Augusta to Harbour Town.

That shouldn’t mean all of what you’ve read here is for naught, however.

There’s often value in understanding that the ongoing trend is that no trend really exists. We went from a year when those who largely played very well without contending at the Masters fared best at the RBC, to a year when the best in the first week were some of the best in the second, to a year when almost nobody who’d been on the leaderboard contended for the title.

Perhaps there’s a certain freedom which comes from knowing this. We don’t have to chase one specific category of players; we don’t have to only play those who are in great form, or good form, or no form at all.

That might not narrow down the talent pool for this week, but it should at least help frame our line of thinking.