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Ian McNeill ranks his top-10 PGA Tour players to watch at the 2026 RBC Heritage from Harbour Town Golf Links. His data-backed insights into who is primed for success.
Things continue to move at a breakneck pace on the PGA Tour, as just four days after crowning our first major champion of 2026, another $20 million is up for grabs in the sixth Signature Event of the season.
With Augusta now in the rearview, the focus shifts from survival to precision. Harbour Town demands a completely different skill set -- one built less on power and volatility, and more on repeatable ball-striking, control off the tee, and comfort on tightly framed greens. That shift in test creates one of the clearest course-fit examinations on the PGA Tour calendar.
Outside of Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose, the top of the PGA Tour’s roster has made the trip down to Hilton Head. How does this elite field stack up at the top -- and who, if anyone, should you be targeting on pre-week betting boards? Without further ado, here are my top ten players to watch at the 2026 RBC Heritage!
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No. 10 - Collin Morikawa
Have a day, Collin Morikawa!
Five birdies in a row. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/bW6w69rTcb
— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) April 12, 2026
For my fellow fanboys and degenerates with vested interest in Collin Morikawa’s Masters performance last week, the four days he put together made for some of the most compelling viewing of the entire tournament. On a golf course that routinely rewards ball speed, carry distance, and optimized launch conditions, Morikawa essentially bunted his way off the tee en route to a T7 finish. In fact, relative to field average, it was by far the shortest driving week of his professional career.
His back was clearly not fully recovered from the issue that forced him to withdraw from last month’s PLAYERS Championship, but perhaps walking like an old man for four days around Augusta National allowed him the benefit of putting like one as well. Despite struggling to even pick the ball from the hole at times, Morikawa recorded the best putting performance of his PGA Tour career (+8.57) in the same week he also posted his worst driving performance (-2.61).
The encouraging part is that he appeared to come through four of the most physically demanding days in golf without further setback. And this week, he returns to a far more forgiving setup for his current limitations. With its tight doglegs, tree-lined corridors, and ample club-down tee shots, only Pebble Beach has produced a lower average driving distance than RBC Heritage since 2015.
What's never in doubt with Morikawa is his iron play, and with another 3.5 strokes gained at the Masters, he remains the Tour's No. 1 approach player this season. If last week is any indicator, Collin's next 72 holes of golf won't be the prettiest on the course, but Harbour Town profiles as a much softer landing spot as he'll have faced seven days ago. Without the same leg up given to raw power, the argument can be made that Collin's stint in the Masters' Top 10 won't simply be a one-week outlier.
No. 9 - Patrick Cantlay
After entering Sunday's final round inside the top 10 and within striking distance of the lead, a closing 73 wasn't exactly the finish that Patrick Cantlay had in mind.
However, his T12 finish at Augusta, paired with a T7 in last month's Valspar, give Cantlay his most encouraging stretch of form we've seen thus far in 2026.
The trending confidence couldn't come at a better time of the schedule, either, as the 2021 FedEx Cup Champion rides his back-to-back top 12s into an event that has historically provided his most evergreen results on the PGA Tour.
Over eight career starts at Harbour Town, Cantlay has just one finish worse than 13th, and a whopping five finishes of third or better -- most notably coming closest to an elusive victory in a playoff loss to Jordan Spieth four years ago.
While Cantlay's No. 1 around-the-green rating was the leading force in his Masters run, it should also be noted that the UCLA product gained over five shots with his iron play across his four rounds at Augusta National (7th in the field), and was the only player inside the top 25 to lose strokes both off the tee and on the greens for the week.
Those negatives are less likely to be exposed in Hilton Head, however, as Cantlay hasn't lost strokes off the tee in any of his eight starts at Harbour Town. And the last time he faced similarly over-seeded putting surfaces, he gained over 3.6 strokes on the greens at Innisbrook.
Based on early market indicators, Cantlay's recent play and course history will make his outright number a tough sell for a player going on nearly four years without a victory. But given where we were just a few months ago, this week provides one of the safest projectable floors we've been able to assign Cantlay in quite some time.
No. 8 - Jordan Spieth
"I hit it better than the year I won."
Jordan Spieth is feeling great about where his game is. 👀 pic.twitter.com/GaiL522DJw
— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) April 13, 2026
Speaking of trending commodities that have made Harbour Town a haven in recent years, Jordan Spieth walked off Augusta National on Sunday afternoon and proclaimed to the press that he’d “hit it better this week than the year I won.”
The numbers bear it out. Spieth finished fifth in the field in SG: Approach (+5.90) and eighth from tee to green (+9.15) en route to a T12 finish. And if not for his worst putting performance at Augusta in five years (-1.93), it’s fair to wonder just how relevant he might have been over the weekend.
More encouraging still for Spieth and his legion of fans is that this performance -- particularly with his irons -- is far from an isolated occurrence. Over his last five tournaments, Spieth has gained nearly four strokes per start on approach and ranks third in this field on a per-round basis.
RBC Heritage should come as a welcome sight for this new, confident version of Spieth. He’s gained strokes putting here in each of the last three seasons, gained off the tee in his last four appearances, and won this event in 2022 while logging one of the best tee-to-green performances of his career (+13.34).
For the first time since that win, it feels like we can project Spieth’s ball-striking with some level of confidence. Harbour Town provides as comfortable a backdrop as he’ll see all season, and it arrives at an ideal time. While he has yet to record a finish better than T11 through the first three months of the year, it would be a surprise not to see his name on the first page of the leaderboard come late Sunday afternoon.
No. 7 - Ludvig Åberg
It’s been nearly a month since Åberg’s Sunday stumble at another of Pete Dye’s iconic layouts, but despite that heartbreaking setback, his season has been anything but derailed.
In his next start following a T5 at TPC Sawgrass, the Swede found himself in contention once again at the Valero Texas Open, gaining nearly nine strokes with his short game alone en route to another top-five finish. And though that same short game failed to cooperate at Augusta National, Åberg quickly regained his usual ball-striking prowess -- gaining 7.5 strokes off the tee and on approach, the eighth-best mark in the field.
With three top fives and no finishes worse than 21st over his last five starts, Åberg sits as one of the PGA Tour’s most in-form players. He ranks first in this field tee to green over his last 24 rounds and third on approach.
His Pete Dye pedigree doesn’t end at Sawgrass, either. Åberg finished 10th here at Harbour Town in his debut, gaining 5.6 strokes with his ball-striking—trailing only Scottie Scheffler and Sepp Straka in that category for the week.
Although upcoming venues like Quail Hollow and Doral may represent more obvious schematic fits for his skill set, the 26-year-old has shown time and again that when his swing is dialed in, there are few courses on Tour capable of withstanding his ball-striking ceiling. It’s also worth noting that his first PGA Tour victory came just two hours down the road in Sea Island, Georgia, and the Eslöv, Sweden native now calls Jacksonville, Florida home. Comfort should not be an issue.
Sundays haven’t yet been kind to Åberg in 2026, but a talent of this caliber is unlikely to be held down for long.
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No. 6 - Tommy Fleetwood
Tommy Fleetwood hit EVERY fairway en route to a 3-shot lead @TravelersChamp. pic.twitter.com/azIvCZfsXs
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 22, 2025
A T33 finish was far from what Tommy Fleetwood had in mind after spending much of Friday afternoon on the outskirts of contention, but ending the week ranked third in driving accuracy and seventh in putting does leave room for optimism -- especially considering the putter had been the biggest question mark in his 2026 profile.
Surprisingly, Fleetwood’s around-the-green play -- which had been a reliable strength through much of the early season -- was the primary culprit in his weekend slide. He recorded the worst short-game performance of his PGA Tour career (-4.05) across four rounds at Augusta, with the bulk of that damage coming on Saturday (-0.97) and Sunday (-3.02).
It would be surprising to see a player of his caliber replicate that kind of performance around the greens at Harbour Town, particularly given that these complexes routinely rank among the least demanding on the PGA Tour.
Over the last ten editions of the RBC Heritage, Harbour Town has ranked as a bottom-five course in around-the-green difficulty in eight of those years. Fleetwood himself has gained strokes around the greens in five of six appearances here, including a +2.94 performance in a T7 finish 12 months ago.
That brings the focus back to his driving and putting efficiency last week. Harbour Town presents one of the most exacting tests of positional driving on Tour, while top-five finishers here typically need to gain close to a stroke per round on the greens. If Fleetwood can carry over that performance -- and pair it with his consistently strong approach play -- this setup should suit him extremely well. In my opinion, his T33 finish at Augusta is far more likely to prove an outlier by season's end than the start of a trend.
No. 5 - Russell Henley
Whereas the previous two write-ups have leaned into levity following a disappointing finish at Augusta, Russell Henley will be making the three-hour trek south with no doubts about the state of his game.
Henley’s T3 at Augusta was his best finish since a runner-up at last year’s TOUR Championship, and perhaps more impressively, he got there almost entirely on the back of his iron play. His +9.61 strokes gained approach performance lapped virtually the entire field -- with Xander Schauffele, the next closest, over two shots worse than Henley.
That return of Henley's elite ball-striking makes him an especially intriguing fit for the demands of RBC Heritage, a heavily positional layout that should be far better suited to his strengths than the bomber's paradise of Augusta National.
Henley has long established himself as one of the game’s most reliable drivers of the ball, ranking fifth on Tour in driving accuracy this season. And over his last five starts here in Hilton Head, he’s posted two top-10 finishes with just one result worse than T19, gaining an average of 6.15 strokes tee to green in that span -- fifth-best in this field.
Of course, given both his course history and his recent time near the top of the Masters leaderboard, Henley won’t be sneaking up on anyone this week -- least of all bookmakers. He profiles as one of the clearest course fits in the field, though my outright interest only becomes tangible if prices drift into the mid-20s.
No. 4 - Xander Schauffele
As mentioned in the previous write-up, Xander Schauffele was very much a name on the rise in last week’s Masters field. He finished second only to Russell Henley in SG: Approach (+7.53), and when combining his driving and approach play, no one in the field gained more strokes over four rounds (+11.97).
Like Spieth, this recent spike at Augusta National is far from an aberration. Schauffele had already gained a combined 16.3 strokes ball striking across his two lead-in starts at TPC Sawgrass and Innisbrook -- both of which resulted in top-five finishes. And if not for some uncharacteristic short-game issues on Friday, he may have entered the weekend much closer to the true heart of contention.
At Harbour Town, Schauffele has compiled a strong if unspectacular résumé since the event joined the Signature Series three years ago, logging three top-20 finishes, including a solo fourth in 2023 where he finished just two shots outside the playoff.
Although it can be argued that other stops on Tour may present more natural schematic fits for his game, the reality is that when a two-time major winner and former world No. 2 shows this level of all-around form, strict course-fit arguments begin to matter less. It feels increasingly like only a matter of time before Schauffele converts one of these elite statistical stretches into an opening victory in 2026.
No. 3 - Cameron Young
As a 55-1 ticket holder on Cameron Young last week, the final 13 holes of his Sunday were tough to stomach. But as another week passes with the 28-year-old once again near the top of a marquee leaderboard, the case for Cam as one of the three best players in the world right now is becoming harder and harder to ignore.
Over his last four starts -- all in either majors or Signature Events -- Young has produced a ball-striking stretch that even Scottie Scheffler or Rory McIlroy would be proud of, gaining an average of 2.15 strokes per round between his driving and iron play.
That figure alone would lap the next-best player in that span by nearly half a stroke per round, but his improvement on the greens has been just as meaningful. His +1.96 putting performance at Augusta National extended a positive run that now spans 18 of his last 21 events, and places him top 10 in this field over his last 50 rounds.
Of course, you don’t need to lean entirely on the numbers to see the trajectory. Finishes of 7th at Riviera, 3rd at Bay Hill, 1st at THE PLAYERS, and 3rd again at Augusta National underscore a player operating with elite-level confidence on the game's biggest stages. His two PGA Tour wins have already come on positional Southeastern layouts (Sedgefield and TPC Sawgrass), and he also owns a T3 finish here at Harbour Town in 2022. Until proven otherwise, Young belongs in the top tier of any weekly power ranking.
No. 2 - Matt Fitzpatrick
One of the most clutch shots in @RBC_heritage HISTORY by Matt Fitzpatrick on the third playoff hole. 🔥
📺: CBS pic.twitter.com/CMxo18tITu
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) April 16, 2023
While many players in this week’s field will be framed as strong statistical fits for Harbour Town, there is only one near the top of the board who can definitively say he considers these links his favorite in the world.
Matt Fitzpatrick has long been an outspoken admirer of Harbour Town and the Sea Pines area -- even before capturing its title here in 2023. His combination of precision driving and elite short-game touch has always made him a popular pick in Hilton Head, but this season he returns as one of the game’s most improved iron players.
Since the start of the season, only four players in this field have gained more strokes on approach per round -- a sharp contrast from the middling-to-below-average iron play that defined much of Fitzpatrick’s previous three PGA Tour seasons.
The gains extend throughout the bag as well. He now ranks at or above the 70th percentile in SG: short game across every major proximity range—50–100, 100–150, 150–200, and 200+ yards -- an ideal profile for a venue that will ask questions with wedges, mid-irons, and long-irons throughout the week.
More impressively, Fitzpatrick has made these improvements without sacrificing the traits that once defined him at an elite level. Over his last 50 rounds, he ranks inside the top 25 in driving accuracy, scrambling, and SG: putting.
The results reflect the profile: two worldwide wins, 12 top-10 finishes, and just six finishes outside the top 30 across his last 25 starts. Even through an underwhelming four days at Augusta, Fitzpatrick still ranked 11th in that field in total ball-striking. The floor feels as high as it has ever been for the World No. 7, and all indicators suggest that trajectory is still pointing upward through golf’s championship season.
No. 1 - Scottie Scheffler
Scottie Scheffler may have finished runner-up at Augusta, but one could argue he answered more questions than the winner over the course of the week.
After a stretch of uncharacteristically average ball-striking through late February and early March, Scheffler arrived at Augusta National with inquiries swirling about whether he was still the same player who dominated the game for the better part of four years.
Those questions were answered emphatically over the next four days, as Scheffler finished the week once again near the top of the tee-to-green leaderboard. His Saturday round saw him lap the field on approach (+5.48), and on Sunday he validated his early-season putting returns on the major stage -- gaining 2.44 strokes to the field, the best mark among anyone inside the top six.
With his elite ball-striking ceiling fully re-established, Scheffler’s projection now looks much closer to the player we’ve come to expect heading into 2026. That becomes especially relevant at a venue like RBC Heritage, where he has finished 8th, 1st, and 11th over the last three seasons despite not putting particularly well in any (-0.03 cumulative strokes gained putting across those 12 rounds).
With McIlroy’s historical tendency to skip this event following major championship appearances, there is no ambiguity about who the clear top player in this field is. Any outright conversation this week begins -- and realistically ends -- with Scottie Scheffler.
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