Tom Watson and Nick Faldo will both be back, playing golf at a PGA event in South Carolina April 17 – 20th at the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head South Carolina. Not only is April the historic Golf Package busy season for this area of the country, but there is a 530 mile love triangle of golf that boasts two PGA tournaments and the biggest Celebrity Charity Event in the country, The Masters in Augusta Georgia, Hootie and the Blowfish’s Monday After the Masters in North Myrtle Beach South Carolina, and the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head South Carolina. If you love golf and all the passions that surround it, great play, great tradition, great fun, raising money, etc., this is the place to be in April.
Tom Watson won the RBC Heritage in 1979 and 1982, but hasn’t played here since 2001. His return is certainly generating its fair share of excitement, but that excitement is coupled by the announcement that Nick Faldo, who hasn’t played a PGA Tour event in this country since 2006, will also be in the field at Harbour Town Golf Links. Faldo’s first of his nine PGA Tour wins came in 1984 at this event. The par 71 public golf course was built in 1969, designed by Pete Dye with help from Jack Nicklaus, and features the smallest greens and some of the narrowest fairways on tour. Most recently Watson has been featured in the news as the Ryder Cup Captain, keeping an eye on players he may select for Gleneagles this September. Faldo has been on the circuit as a golf analyst for CBS Sports. It will be great to see these two Hall of Fame gentlemen back on the course this month.
The tournament was birthed in 1969, held Thanksgiving weekend when organizers wondered if anyone would come. When Palmer won that first event, his first win in 14 months, there was a flurry of news surrounding the course and Hilton Head Island. Palmer won $20,000 of the original $100,000 purse which has grown to $5.8 million in 2014. With over 100,000 spectators each year, and both the Golf Channel and CBS blocking time for live coverage, to say the tournament has come a long way – and moved 6 months earlier – is an understatement.
We look forward to watching Tom Watson and Nick Faldo as well as defending champion Graeme McDowell back in South Carolina, in the wake of the Masters, to play at the RBC Heritage. Come join us and see who will don the plaid Sunday afternoon.