2025 RBC Heritage betting guide: 6 picks our gambling expert loves

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting. You can follow on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the 2025 RBC Heritage which gets underway Thursday in Hilton Head, S.C.. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see data from Chirp Golf, a mobile app that features both Free-To-Play and Daily Fantasy golf contests where you can win cash and prizes with each round and tournament.

Wow. What a week that was, huh?

Thinking two of our pre-tournament picks to win, had the slimmest of chances to do so heading into Sunday’s final round, trailing by six and seven shots respectively — and then to have not one but both of them, Patrick Reed (115-1) and Justin Rose (110-1), both triple-digit long-shots, threaten McIlroy all the way to the bitter end, was stunning and incredibly exciting. 

Better yet, with Rose getting to a playoff with McIloy, it gave us an opportunity to hedge our bet and guarantee a profit. How everything eventually fell into place, really was like writing a movie script. With Rose ultimately finishing runner-up, that is now two seconds in a row for us, with Novak coming up short two weeks ago at the Valero Texas Open. Last fall, we had three runner-ups in a row. Let’s do one better this time around and get a victory. On to Harbour Town.

The short trip to the South Carolina coast feels like a much-needed vacation after the season’s first major championship. It is the RBC Heritage in its usual spot on the calendar, the week after the Masters. It is a Signature Event with a limited field and no cut.

I am lucky enough to have played Harbour Town Golf Links at the Sea Pines Resort in Hilton Head, South Carolina and it is one of my favorite courses that I’ve ever played. It really is a polar opposite from last week’s site, Augusta National. Augusta is a massive beast of a property, with wide fairways, very little rough, lots of elevation change, huge, bentgrass greens, and an inland location. Harbour Town is located on the coast, only about 140 miles southeast of Augusta, and is a smaller, shorter, relatively flat golf course with narrow, tree-lined fairways with some of the smallest greens on Tour, which happen to be Bermudagrass.

The doctor and the player, Alister Mackenzie and Bobby Jones, designed Augusta National. Similarly, Pete Dye designed Harbour Town with assistance from a young golfer just getting into the design business named Jack Nicklaus.

Unlike last week, we will favor Driving Accuracy over Driving Distance in this week’s statistical profile. Rather than Hole Proximity from 200+ yards, we’ll look at the same from 125-200 yards. I looked at the Par 4 Scoring for those measuring between 400-450 yards, not 450-500 yards, like we did last week. Harbour Town is a par 71, stretching to just over 7,200 yards, whereas Augusta National nearly reaches 7,600 yards. But two areas of emphasis this week are identical to what we used at the Masters — that being Strokes Gained: Approach and Scrambling.

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Like the Masters, the RBC Heritage has been played at the same golf course for a long time, so we do have good course history data. The correlated courses are strong connections too. TPC Sawgrass, home to the Players Championship and another Pete Dye design, shares a lot of crossover success with Harbour Town. Others I used this week are Colonial Country Club (Charles Schwab Challenge), Sea Island (RSM Classic), Innisbrook (Valspar Championship), and Waialae Country Club, where they play the Sony Open in Hawaii.

I have six selections this week. I have played two of them also for a top-10 finish, and the remaining four for a top-20 finish. Let’s see if we can do better than a third-straight runner-up finish

Patrick Cantlay (20-1)

The man is practically an auto-play at this golf tournament. He has finished third four times, runner-up once and also seventh. He has two top-5 finishes already this season and was 12th last month at the Players Championship. Over the last 36 rounds, Cantlay is 16th in this field for SG: Approach and ranks ninth on the 400-450 yard Par 4s. I also played Cantlay for a top-10 finish.

Corey Conners (25-1)

Conners is currently playing some of the best golf of his career. He has five top-10 finishes this season in just 10 starts, including a sixth at the Players, eighth at the Valspar, and eighth again last week at the Masters. He has at least one top-10 finish at each of our correlated courses this week too. Conners is No. 1 in this field for Greens in Regulation Gained over the last 36-rounds and ranks top-20 for Hole Proximity from 125-200 yards out. Conners is my other top-10 finish play. Everyone else, I played for a top-20.

Daniel Berger (45-1)

Berger has been as high as third here at the RBC Heritage, won at Colonial in 2020, comes off a 21st-place finish at the Masters and a 20th last month at the Players. Last fall, Berger finished runner-up at the RSM Classic. Over the last 36-rounds, Berger ranks ninth in this field for SG: Tee to Green. He’s third in Fairways Gained, 13th in Greens in Regulation Gained, and is 18th in Scrambling.

Lucas Glover (80-1)

Glover missed the cut last week at the Masters but in March, took third at the Players Championship and eighth at the Valspar Championship. He has played this event over 20 times with multiple top-20 finishes. Like Conners, Glover too has finished top-10 at each one of our correlated courses this week. Glover ranks No. 1 in this field for Fairways Gained, is sixth for SG: Approach, sixth in Hole Proximity from 150-175 yards, and ranks 10th on the 400-450 yard Par 4’s.

Bud Cauley (90-1)

Cauley has finished sixth or better in three straight starts and that includes a sixth at the Players and a fourth at the Valspar. He is 10th in this field for Greens in Regulation Gained, 20th in Scrambling, sixth in Hole Proximity from 175-200 yards, and ranks fourth for SG: Tee to Green over the last 36 rounds.

Michael Kim (105-1)

This one is a bit of a flyer. I’ve seen prices as low as 66-1 and as high as what I have here in the triple-digits. Kim has missed the cut at Harbour Town three times. He’s missed at the Players four times and three times at Colonial, despite a sixth-place finish there in 2023. Kim, however, has become a vastly improved player in just the last few years. Between the WM Phoenix Open and Arnold Palmer Invitational this season, Kim’s record was 2-13-13-6-4. He just finished 27th last week at Augusta in only his second time playing the Masters with his debut being six years ago in 2019. He ranks third in this field for SG: Tee to Green over the last 36-rounds, is 11th for SG: Approach, 12th in Scrambling, and is 13th on the 400-450 yard Par 4s. 

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