RBC Heritage Week Reshapes the South End of the Island Every April

The RBC Heritage has been played at Harbour Town Golf Links, inside Sea Pines, in mid-April almost every year since 1983 — traditionally the week after the Masters. The 2026 edition ran April 13 to 19. It is now a PGA Tour Signature Event, which means a reduced invitational field of around 132 players and a purse in the $20 million range, and it means the names at the top of the leaderboard are the names on the season-long list.

What it does to the south end

Harbour Town is not a stadium course dropped in a field. It is a working marina village at the end of a residential resort, reached through a gate. During tournament week, vehicle access to the Harbour Town Yacht Basin area requires a tournament hang tag from early morning until play ends. Anyone staying inside Sea Pines walks, bikes or takes the trolley. Anyone coming from off-property parks where the tournament tells them to park and rides a shuttle in.

Outside tournament week, Sea Pines charges a day gate pass for non-guests — around $9 a car at recent published rates, with a weekly option. That pass is what gets you to the lighthouse, the Liberty Oak and the Forest Preserve the rest of the year.

If you are not here for the golf

• Rental rates on the south end climb for Heritage week and the weeks either side of it. If your trip is flexible, the first half of May is a quieter, cheaper version of the same weather.
• Restaurant tables in Sea Pines, South Beach and Coligny book out. Reserve before you travel, not on arrival.
• Traffic thickens on Greenwood Drive and Pope Avenue in the afternoons. The pathway network is genuinely faster than a car on those days.
• North-end beaches — Folly Field, Driessen, Fish Haul Creek — are barely affected. April water is still cold, but the beach is yours.

Why the 18th matters

The closing hole runs along Calibogue Sound with the striped lighthouse behind the green and the wind coming off the water. Small greens, tight corridors of live oak and pine, and a finish that punishes anyone who has been guessing all week. It is the reason a course this short still holds up against a Signature Event field.