Significant changes coming to PGA Tour. What’s the Heritage’s future?

Speculation runs rampant in PGA Tour circles these days, and questions without answers abound. Basically, what will the new look be for professional golf’s major league?

Reports suggest smaller fields with fewer tournaments at the top level. Ideas of moving prominent events to different spots on the schedule, staging competition in more metropolitan areas and restricting the number of fully exempt players have been floated.

Specifics must wait, perhaps until The Players Championship in a couple of weeks. But there’s no doubt that significant changes are coming, said Steve Wilmot, the longtime tournament director of the Tour’s RBC Heritage Classic played annually on Hilton Head Island.

Amid the uncertainty, what’s the Heritage’s future?

“It’s good to be where we are now,” Wilmot said Monday at the tournament’s sponsors day at Harbour Town Golf Links.

A multi-year commitment for title sponsorship being in place with RBC is a plus. In addition, the Heritage received two of the Tour’s annual awards in 2025 — the most “fan first” event and its nomination of the charity of the year, Deep Well Project.

“The awards and playing the week after the Masters ... those are something important that people don’t think about,” Wilmot said.

Yet, there’s still the unknown.

“In terms of specifics, I probably learned more from Tiger Woods at his press conference last week at Riviera,” Wilmot said. “Really, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

Woods, who heads the Tour’s Future Competition Committee, noted “so many moving parts” in looking ahead. There are dates and sites to be considered, the number of players and number of tournaments to be decided. What about the charitable aspect, the television contracts and the sponsors?

“We haven’t sat down and talked about if this happens or if that happens,” Wilmot said. “A date change? That hasn’t been discussed. But we would look at it. We’ll look at everything. Like Tiger said, there are so many moving parts.”

Certainly, the Heritage has momentum in its favor. After scrambling to find a sponsor in 2011, the tournament has thrived, and the response to the COVID pandemic in 2020 showed commitment and flexibility.

“With COVID, we were canceled (for the original April dates),” Wilmot said. “Then, the Tour came to us and said, ‘Hey, can you reschedule?’ They knew we could, and we pulled it off in June. To be where we are required a lot of hard work, but we’re in a good place.”

Wilmot came to the Heritage in 1986, and his first tournament in 1987 had a purse of $650,000. Davis Love III prevailed by one stroke over Steve Jones and collected the winner’s share, $117,000. Players this year will compete for $20 million.

“I always say, ‘Do better and be better and get better,’ and that’s what we’ve done through the years,” he said. “Just because we’ve done something five years ago or last year, it might have been right or not, so let’s continue to look for better ways.

“Some of the better things we’ve done over the years have been met initially with resistance. Then, all of a sudden, the same people will say, ‘That’s the best thing you’ve ever done.’”

The Heritage staff has grown from three in Wilmot’s first year to the current 21 — 13 full-time employees and eight interns, which he calls “an incredible group.”

“I used to think I’d like status quo every year, but if you’re status quo, you’re not getting any better, you’ve become content,” he said. “So, for us, it’s ‘status go.’ We want to look at things. Just because we’ve done it one way for a long time doesn’t mean we can’t make it better. The staff thinks that way. We want to elevate the experience for everyone.”

The idea “to elevate the experience” dawned on Saturday of the 2019 Heritage. Wilmot stood on the Heritage lawn and did not like what he saw.

“We couldn’t have gotten another person in,” he said. “I saw the congestion and thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, this isn’t good,’” he said. “We had COVID (with no spectators) in ’20 and limited spectators in ’21, so we couldn’t work on the congestion problem until ’22.

“We added restrooms, concessions, limited tickets ,,, things to make attending the Heritage a great experience. That’s a reason for the ‘fan first’ award. No matter what changes might come to the Tour, we’re always looking ahead with a goal of getting better. Put everything together and that’s why I think it’s good to be where we are.”

Heritage dates. The RBC Heritage presented by Boeing will be played April 16-19 at Sea Pines Resort’s Harbour Town Golf Links. It’s a signature event on the PGA Tour schedule with a limited field of about 72 players with no 36-hole cut. Justin Thomas is defending champion. Tickets are available online at www.rbcheritage.com.