PGA Tour’s sponsor invite conundrum is alive at RBC Heritage

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – Steve Wilmot is working the RBC Heritage for the 38^th straight year. Long enough, in fact, that his first tournament was in 1987, when Davis Love III won for the first time.

“Davis has gone on to win this event five times and make it all the way to the Hall of Fame and I’m still sitting here in this double-wide,” said Wilmot, president and tournament director of the RBC Heritage, with a wide smile.

But in all of his years in his post, he’s never received so many requests from players and agents seeking a sponsor invite. As if further proof was necessary, he pulled from his desk a spreadsheet consisting of a handful of pages stapled together where he tracked the performance of all the players who had texted, emailed, and phoned hoping to get into the Heritage now that it is a $20 million signature event with a limited field, no cut (guaranteed payday) and jacked up FedEx Cup points.

Last year, as a designated event, the RBC Heritage field peaked at 150, an increase from 132 and an all-time high. This year, it’s limited to 70 (down to 69 with Viktor Hovland withdrawing over the weekend) and Wilmot’s sponsor invites were chopped in half from eight down to four. He whittled the potential candidates down to 40, to 30 and then 20, personally calling the players to break the bad news.

But he held off on making any announcements about the four Willy Wonka golden ticket winners to play Harbour Town Golf Links this week. The Official World Golf Ranking didn’t update until midnight after the Masters, which impacted some of his decisions, so he waited until Monday morning to announce the four sponsor invites, the latest he’s ever done that.

The four lucky players are Gary Woodland, the 2019 U.S. Open winner who is a sentimental pick after returning from brain surgery last fall; Kevin Kisner, a popular player who once lost the tournament in a playoff and is a South Carolina resident; Shane Lowry, the 2019 British Open champion who has three top-10s in his last five years at this event and seems poised to win the title some day; and Webb Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open champion, 2018 Players Championship winner, the 2021 RBC Heritage champion, as well as an ambassador with RBC for four years.

Kisner received an exemption into a signature event for the first time while Lowry, who is an ambassador for MasterCard, the presenting sponsor of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, got his second as did Woodland (Genesis Invitational). For…