In its first five years, the RSM (formerly McGladrey) Classic at Sea Island Golf Club featured a succession of exciting finishes that included two playoffs and three tournaments decided by one shot.
Three of the five winners engineered spectacular final round comebacks with scores of 63 (Ben Crane in 2011 and Robert Streb in 2014) and a tournament and course record 60 (Tommy Gainey in 2012). Crane and Streb both erased 5-shot deficits going to the final round, and Gainey came from an unlikely seven off the pace to win outright.
Last year, however, was a little different.
Former Georgia Bulldog Kevin Kisner took control of the tournament with a third round 64 to take a 3-stroke led into the final round, and followed with another 64 on Sunday to increase his margin to six, finishing with a tournament record total of 22-under 260.
Kisner was the first winner of the RSM Classic to enjoy a pleasant stroll down the fairway of the difficult 18th hole on Sunday, and when he returns to St. Simons Island for the 2016 edition of the tournament, he will enjoy another first.
The Aiken, S.C., native and lifelong resident will be playing the role of defending champion for the first time on the PGA Tour, with his victory at Sea Island Golf Club last year his first after four winless seasons.
This year’s RSM Classic will be played Nov. 17-20, and will be the final official PGA Tour event in 2016. After seven tournaments in six weeks, the Tour will take a break until the Tournament of Champions is played in early January in Hawaii.
The RSM Classic was played for the first time in 2010, and for its first three years was a part of the PGA Tour’s Fall Series, a group of events played after the Tour Championship that did not award FedExCup points or a Masters invitation to its champion. In 2013, the Fall Series events became equal partners with the other PGA Tour stops, awarding full FedExCup points and a Masters invite to the winner (except for the opposite week event in Mississippi).
The other big change for the RSM Classic came last year when Sea island Golf Club’s Plantation Course joined Seaside as the hosts for the tournament. That enabled the tournament to increase its field to 156 players, and not worry about having to battle daylight on Thursday and Friday with a field of 132 playing off both nines in morning and afternoon waves.
Now, the tournament can begin with later morning tee times on both courses and comfortably get the round in, with some wiggle room built in if there’s a weather delay, something tournament officials have not had to worry about the first six years.
The tournament will feature a very representative field that includes almost all the players with ties to Sea Island GC, St. Simons Island and various other spots throughout the Southeast, along with some other familiar names
Four of the RSM Classic winners have strong ties to either Georgia or the neighboring state of South Carolina, with two residents of both states among the six champions.
St. Simons features a long list of PGA Tour players who call the island home, with 2013 tournament champion Chris Kirk living there for several years, returning to his native north Atlanta suburbs shortly before winning that year. Kirk has been a frequent contender in the recent Fall tournaments.
Among the locals you can expect to see in action at the Seaside and Plantation courses are:
Tournament host Davis Love, who has recovered from hip surgery earlier this year. Love shared the 54-hole lead in 2012, but fell victim to Gainey’s final round 60.
Ryder Cup teammates Zach Johnson and Matt Kuchar, neither of whom have produced the kind of results in the tournament you’d expect from the accomplished players with home course knowledge. A tie for 12th in the first RSM Classic in 2012 is Johnson’s best finish, with Kuchar managing a T7 in 2013.
The best finishes for the former Georgia Bulldog trio of Harris English, Brian Harman and Hudson Swafford range from 10th to 15th, with fellow ex-Bulldogs Kirk and Russell Henley, who both lived on St. Simons Island previously, faring a little better. Kirk was a close fourth the year after he won in 2013, with Henley, a Macon native now living on the South Carolina coast, tying him for fourth in 2014 and following with a sixth place finish last year.
Prior to moving to St. Simons, Michael Thompson finished one shot out of a playoff in 2011 and was 10th the next year.
Other players with Southern roots have also excelled in the tournament. Heath Slocum, who lived all over the South as his father Jack worked as a PGA club professional, has settled in the north Atlanta suburbs and won the inaugural RSM Classic in 2010. Slocum placed in the top 20 two of the next three years, but has since lost his game and his PGA Tour status after winning four times between 2004 and 2010.
In addition to Gainey and Kisner, several other players with roots in the Carolinas have been major factors at Sea Island GC. Bill Haas was second behind Slocum in 2010, with Webb Simpson losing in a playoff the next year, and D.J. Trahan and Scott Brown posting consecutive ties for fourth in 2012 and ’13.
Kirk, who has returned to Athens to reside with his family, has been the most consistently successful performer in the RSM Classic with two finishes of fourth or better and two other top 20s, the first before he joined the PGA Tour. Simpson has two other finishes of 12th or higher along with his playoff loss, with Louisiana’s David Toms taking third in 2010, second in 2012 and 14th in 2014. This being an even year, it may be time for Toms to contend again.
The lone player with three top 10s in the first six years is Augusta native Charles Howell, who shot 62 to finish sixth in 2010, was seventh two years later and ninth last year.
Kisner also has a successful track record in the tournament, tying for 20th in 2013, and contending in 2014, tying for fourth before his victory last year.
During his professional career, Kisner won events on the defunct eGolf and Hooter s Tours, and collected a pair of titles on the Web.com Tour. Kisner has vague recollections of whether he had ever returned to a tournament as defending champion, but was on hand to defend one of his Web.com titles, a rarity on that tour.
“This will be new,” Kisner said during the Tour Championship of serving as defending champion at Sea Island GC. “I’m looking forward to being defending champion. I feel really comfortable and I’ve spent a lot of time there.”
Kisner contended in the SEC Championship on the Seaside course twice during his career at Georgia, beginning his long time relationship with Sea Island Golf Club. Kisner and Kirk were teammates on Georgia’s 2009 NCAA Championship team along with fellow PGA Tour member Brendan Todd. Kisner joined them as PGA Tour winners last Fall, following a successful (if non-winning) run on the 2014-15 PGA Tour.
After failing to crack the top 100 in the FedExCup standings his first three seasons on the PGA Tour, Kisner emerged as a prime time player last year at Hilton Head, losing in a playoff after shooting 64 in the final round. Three weeks later, he turned in another strong final round effort in the Players, but again lost in a playoff.
Following several more top finishes, he made it into a playoff for the third time in less than three months in the Greenbrier, again losing in extra holes after another final round of 64. In each playoff, it took some outstanding play by the winner to deny Kisner.
After finishing 21st in the final FedExCup standings, Kisner continued his strong play in the Fall portion of the 2015-16 schedule, placing second – not in a playoff – in the WGC event in China two weeks before the victory at Sea Island GC elevated his career.
Kisner opened last year’s RSM Classic with scores of 65 at Plantation (7-under) and 67 at Seaside (3-under) to trail by one shot after each of the first two rounds. He grabbed a 3-stroke lead after a third round 64 at Seaside, and pulled away from the field by shooting 5-under 30 on the front nine, finishing with another 64 to win by six over Kevin Chappell, who ended the 2015-16 season by losing in a playoff in the Tour Championship.
Chappell held the lead after 36 holes of the RSM Classic, shooting 66 the first day at Plantation and 65 the next at Seaside.
Chappell is back in the field this year along with veterans Jim Furyk, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Luke Donald, Ian Poulter, Brandt Snedeker, Boo Weekley, K.J. Choi and 2014 FedExCup champion Billy Horschel.
Other Georgians in the field include Jason Bohn, Roberto Castro, Stewart Cink, Luke List, Vaughn Taylor and PGA Tour rookie Ollie Schniederjans. Among the St. Simons contingent in the field are veteran Jonathan Byrd and youngsters Hudson Swafford, Patton Kizzire and Scott Langley, and rookies Trey Mullinax, Rick Lamb, J.T. Poston and Bobby Wyatt.
Tim Weinhart, who recently won his ninth Georgia PGA Player of the Year title, will represent the Section in the tournament. He has played in the RSM Classic several times previously, and has made a few strong runs at making the cut, a rare occurrence for a PGA member/
The addition of Plantation as a host course for the first two rounds has required the players to prepare a little differently, and also changed the tournament’s par. Seaside, which was extensively renovated in the late 1990s by Tom Fazio, is a classic seaside design with marshes, dunes and the winds coming off the ocean integral parts of its layout.
With a few exceptions, Plantation is more of an inland, parkland-style layout, but with water in play on about half the holes. Rees Jones renovated Plantation just before Fazio completed his work on Seaside, and the two bordering layouts are complementary but distinct, with Plantation playing to a par 72 with four par fives, three of which have risk/reward properties (one off the tee) and three par 3s over water.
Seaside, a par 70 with two par 5s, is more challenging around the greens, and the marshes and dunes can exact penalties as readily as the water on Plantation, Even with two fewer par 5s, Seaside is less than 50 yards shorter than Plantation, with neither long by modern standards at around 7,000 yards (Seaside) and 7,050 (Plantation).
With the addition of Plantation, par is now 142 for 36 holes and 282 for 72.
The 465-yard ninth at Plantation and 470-yard 18th at Seaside are the only par 4s longer than 450, giving the tour players plenty of opportunities to hit short iron approaches. Both courses will yield low scores to quality play in placid conditions, but if the breezes kick up and shots begin to stray, bogeys (or worse) can quickly appear on a scorecard.