Course Preview and Fits: The RSM Classic

Love it or hate it, the fall swing comes to an end this week as we head to Sea Island, Georgia, for the RSM Classic. Although it’s not a great field this week, it is significantly better than recent events with seven of the top 50 in the world expected to show up.

The Course:

The RSM Classic is one of a few PGA Tour events which has multiple golf courses in play. For the first two rounds, players will alternate between the Seaside and Plantation courses, while the weekend will be played exclusively at the Seaside course. Both the Plantation and Seaside feature Bermudagrass greens, but the Seaside has ryegrass overseed in the fairways and rough, while the Plantation has paspalum fairways and Bermuda rough (note this was in 2024; there is no official designation yet for 2025, and they have overseeded in previous years).

The majority of the golf tournament will be played at the Seaside Course, which is one of the shortest courses on Tour, playing as a 7,005-yard par 70 with four par 3s, two par 5s, and 12 par 4s. Although the location and topography are drastically different, the Seaside Course shares some similarities with Black Desert and Cabo off the tee. The fairways are generous at 43 yards wide, but should players miss them, the penalty rate is one of the highest on Tour at 10.5% since 2019. There is water in play on 13 of the 18 holes, with out of bounds in play littered throughout the course as well. It makes for an interesting driving test once again, where small misses are effectively the same as perfect drives, but big misses are penalized severely. Where the Seaside Course does diverge from those setups is in length. Only two of the 12 par 4s are over 450 yards in length, and many holes funnel players to wider portions of the fairway, away from the hazards. Given these dynamics, there are more tee shots than usual where players will hit less than driver, reducing the ability to “bomb and gouge” their way to success.