Everything you need to know for Sunday’s final round in St. Simons Island.
It’s time to crown the winner of the final PGA Tour event that awards FedEx Cup points of the calendar year.
St. Simons Island, Georgia, plays host to the 2022 RSM Classic, which moved to The Seaside course only on the weekend. It will play as a par 70 with a length of 7,005 yards. The Plantation course was also used during the first two rounds.
Patrick Rodgers and Ben Martin sit atop the leaderboard after round three, one shot ahead of three players, a group that includes Sahith Theegala. Seven players are 12 under, two back.
Here’s a look at Sunday’s tee times. All times ET.
Everything you need to know for Saturday’s third round in St. Simons Island.
It’s time for moving day of the final PGA Tour event that awards FedEx Cup points of the calendar year.
St. Simons Island, Georgia, plays host to the 2022 RSM Classic, which moved to The Seaside course only on the weekend. It will play as a par 70 with a length of 7,005 yards. The Plantation course was also used during the first two rounds.
There’s a three-way tie at the top between Cole Hammer, Harry Higgs and Andrew Landry. Hammer, who led after the first round, shot 4 under Friday at the Seaside course. Landry and Higgs each fired rounds of 7 under on Friday to move into a tie for the lead. That trio will be off in the final group Sunday.
Here’s a look at Saturday’s tee times. All times ET.
Everything you need to know for Friday’s second round in St. Simons Island.
It’s time for the second round of the final PGA Tour event that awards FedEx Cup points of the calendar year.
St. Simons Island, Georgia, plays host to the 2022 RSM Classic, which will be played on two courses during the first two rounds. The Seaside course will play as a par 70 with a length of 7,005 yards, and the Plantation course will play as a par 72 at 7,060 yards.
The Seaside course will be used for both weekend rounds.
See StrackaLine’s hole-by-hole maps of the Seaside Course in Georgia, which along with the Plantation Course hosts the RSM Classic.
Sea Island’s Seaside Course is one of the two courses in play for this week’s RSM Classic on the PGA Tour. The first two rounds also include the popular resort’s Plantation course – each player competes one round on each course – before all weekend play moves solely to the Seaside Course in St. Simons Island, Georgia.
The Seaside Course originally was laid out by famed designers Harry S. Colt and Charles Alison in 1929 and was redesigned by Tom Fazio in 1999. It will play to 7,005 yards with a par of 70 for the RSM Classic. The Plantation Course – renovated by tournament host Davis Love III and his brother, Mark, in 2019 – will play to 7,060 yards with a par of 72.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the players face this week on the Seaside Course. Check out the maps of each hole below.
Everything you need to know for Thursday’s first round in St. Simons Island.
It’s time for the final PGA Tour event that awards FedEx Cup points of the calendar year.
St. Simons Island, Georgia, plays host to the 2022 RSM Classic, which will be played on two courses during the first two rounds. The Seaside course will play as a par 70 with a length of 7,005 yards, and the Plantation course will play as a par 72 at 7,060 yards.
The Seaside course will be used for both weekend rounds.
Talor Gooch is the defending champion, but he won’t be in the field since he joined the LIV Golf Series. Tony Finau, who won last week in Houston, withdrew from the field Tuesday.
Here’s a look at Thursday’s tee times. All times ET.
There’s a shortlist of tournaments he’d love to add to his career resume.
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — Zach Johnson has two majors and 12 PGA Tour titles, so there’s not much left he has to prove.
But there is a shortlist of tournaments he’d love to add to his career resume before he’s done.
Both are separated by about 75 miles of I-95 and he’s right in the thick of contention for the event he considers a home game, the RSM Classic at the Sea Island Club, near his St. Simons Island home.
Johnson shot 71 on Friday at the Plantation Course, battling gusty wind and chilly temperatures along with the rest of the field. But combined with his opening-round 61 on Thursday under benign conditions at the Seaside Course, and it adds up to 10-under 132 and a tie for sixth, three shots behind leader Talor Gooch.
Not many players post a score 10 shots higher than the previous day’s round, and make the statement: “my round was really good.”
But Johnson would, and it involves a dose of context. The temperature dropped 10 degrees from the previous day and the wind went from calm to 25 mph, gusting even higher coming off the Atlantic Ocean.
“I hit a lot of solid shots,” he said. “Some panned out, some did not. I think when you have winds and gusts of this nature, that’s going to happen. It’s the nature of the beast right now. The only commonality between yesterday and today is that we played 18 holes. It was vastly different but that’s a cool thing, too. It’s a cool thing about golf and these conditions.”
Johnson put some shots in the bank early, with birdies at Nos. 14 and 15, then a spectacular eagle at the par-5 18th. He flew a hybrid 222 yards into the green, with the ball stopping 3 feet from the hole.
It wasn’t an easy putt, with the break going opposite the wind direction. But he dropped it to take the lead at the time.
“It was one of those shots where I was like, ‘I’m going to stay a little left of the right trap and if it goes over the green, because it’s so straight downwind, it’s fine, I’m putting, chipping back into the wind,'” he said. “But it landed right in the tier. My divot was wet and huge and I’m surprised it stayed on the green. It was the longest two-and-a-half-footer I’ve ever had with that wind.”
Johnson was 2-over on the front side, his back, but saved a key par at the par-5 eighth with a 6-foot putt.
Most Tour players don’t like to brag about saving pars at par-5 holes but he was coming off a three-putt bogey from 18 feet at No. 7 and wasn’t complaining.
“The best putt I hit all day,” he said.
The tournament now moves to the Seaside Course for the final two rounds, a track even more open to wind than the Plantation — which is fine by Johnson, who has a British Open title in 2015 at St. Andrews as one of his two crowning achievements in golf, along with his 2007 Masters title.
Johnson is in the best position he’s ever been in 11 prior starts in the RSM Classic. His previous low 36-hole score was 133 last year, which was five shots behind eventual winner Robert Streb. Johnson shot 65 in the third round and was in the final group, three shots behind Streb.
A 68 on Sunday left Johnson three shots out of the playoff involving Streb and Kevin Kisner.
“This tournament means a lot,” he said. “There’s probably two or three tournaments outside of the four big ones that I feel are just … have just a bit more weight than the others. Certainly John Deere (near his home state of Iowa in Silvis, Ill.), I would probably throw Colonial (in Fort Worth, Tex.). Man, The Players is awesome. And this one’s right there, it is.”
But Johnson has won twice at Colonial and once at the John Deere. What’s left are the tournaments on the Golden Isles and Florida’s First Coast and he has family connections in both places: he’s lived on St. Simons Island since 2005 and his wife’s family is from Fernandina Beach.
Johnson has come close. Last year was his third top-10 finish in the RSM Classic.
Then there’s the “St. Simons Curse:” no player who has lived on the Golden Isles at the time has won the tournament.
“Well, it’s hard, it’s hard to win,” he said. “Maybe there’s a little bit of added pressure because of who you’re playing in front of and that kind of thing. I think it’s going to happen. Shoot … every year if we lose one [a player moving out of the area], we get two more guys. And there’s a bunch of mini-tour guys here that will probably be on Tour … I think the odds are in our favor.”
Johnson said he has two key reasons for wanting to break the curse.
“Certainly it has to do with being at home and representing Sea Island and St. Simons, playing in front of friends and family,” he said. “But it also probably more has to do with the fact that the three letters on my chest, [tournament title sponsor] RSM, is very special to me. It sounds cliche, but it’s the opposite of that. It’s a unique situation. The individuals behind — behind that company are just tremendous individuals and I’m very, very fortunate to be with them.”
Davis Love III, the unofficial mayor of the island, helped give Southern Soul a new lease on life, and it later returned the favor.
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Smoke rolled from the side of the building. Within minutes flames leapt from the roof. By the time the fire department extinguished the blaze, the roof had collapsed and Southern Soul, the half-century-old converted gas station that Harrison Sapp and Griffin Bufkin had turned into a haven for barbecue lovers was gutted.
The fire happened in 2010, just months after Guy Fieri of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” the Food Network favorite, had filmed a segment that was bound to shoot Southern Soul to stardom. But to hear Sapp tell it, something special resulted from their hopes and dreams going up in smoke.
“The whole island took care of us,” Sapp said. “The building was still smoking, I thought our little dream was done and he’s standing there telling me we could use his warehouse for as long as we needed to.”
He is Davis Love III, PGA Championship winner, Ryder Cup captain, host of the island’s PGA Tour stop, the RSM Classic, who grew up on this part of a chain of barrier islands nicknamed the Golden Isles, working in the cart barn as a teenager and cutting the crab grass out of the greens at Sea Island’s Seaside Course with a hook knife. Love, the unofficial mayor of the island, helped give the restaurant a new lease on life.
Just weeks after the fire, Southern Soul was back in business, operating first under a canvas tarpaulin and then a mobile food trailer. Sapp remembers being hot and sweaty and just plain dirty. Every chance he could, he’d escape for some A/C.
“I would go into their office (at Crown Sports Management, which represents Love) like Kramer in ‘Seinfeld’ and just sit on their couch and talk to them forever,” Sapp recalled. “We just became friends.”
Bufkin and Sapp had served Love over the years in their previous lives as bartenders at various island establishments, but they struck up a friendship over food.
“Davis loves barbecue more than anybody you’ve ever met,” Sapp said. “He’d rather be cooking barbecue than anything.”
— Southern Soul BBQ (@southernsoulbbq) April 3, 2020
That segment of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” aired in the fall of 2010, not long after Southern Soul moved back into a restored version of its original restaurant at the side of a roundabout just a mile off the beach. Business boomed.
“It’s amazing what happens when he comes,” Love said of Fieri. Not long after, Garden & Gun heaped praise and pretty soon it snowballed to Southern Living proclaiming Southern Soul “the best barbecue in the south.”
During the RSM Classic, if you’re looking to meet a professional golfer, just take a seat at one of Southern Soul’s picnic tables and wait. Jimmy Walker and Trey Mullinax were among the first pros to show up. Walker critiqued the brisket, and Mullinax wondered why they closed so early. Zach Johnson, Jonathan Byrd, Keith Mitchell, Hudson Swafford and Harris English – who says, “It’s hard to beat that weekday worker pulled pork sandwich and fries, but I need a nap afterwards,” – are among the local pros who eat there regularly.
“When they are younger they eat there a lot,” Sapp said. “When they get married, their wives don’t let them go there as much. They won’t say that, but that’s the truth.”
On Tuesday of tournament week, Sapp began cooking in the oak-fired Lang and Oyler pits at 1 a.m. to cater lunch on the driving range at Sea Island, which has become a tradition like no other.
Love, who likes to stop by for the Thursday pastrami special, inquired after the fire about expanding the business and ended up going in as a partner in Southern Soul. (In 2019, they opened a second restaurant, Frosty’s Griddle and Shake – you haven’t lived until you’ve tried the Davis Love III pimento cheeseburger – and currently have a building under contract in Brunswick, Georgia, for their first restaurant off island.)
“Yeah, I’m shocked how it has blown up,” said Love, who can be found pitching in to cook Boston butt, smoked for 12-14 hours over oak, at Southern Soul when they are short-handed. “I’m their least talented, highest-priced employee.”
Love moved to the island as a child in 1978, when his father, famed teaching pro Davis Love Jr., was given a blank slate to start an instructional school anywhere in the country he wanted. He chose Sea Island Resort, and Davis has called this place halfway between Savannah, Georgia and Jacksonville, Florida, home ever since. With his golf and business successes, Love, the winner of 21 PGA Tour titles, could have moved anywhere, but he and wife Robin, his high-school sweetheart, never considered leaving and built a home nestled among live oaks and palms on a secluded five-acre lot with prime marsh frontage. For a decade, Love hosted the RSM Classic’s pro-am draft party in a tent in his backyard, where participants feasted on the island’s best low-country cuisine, including barbecue from Southern Soul.
Sapp gets all choked up when he thinks of Love’s contributions to the community, some of which are well-documented through his Davis Love Foundation, which has raised more than $14 million in its first 12 years hosting the tournament to support charities focused on children and families in need. But there are other acts of kindness for which Love seeks no publicity. Take, for one, how Love cooked up all the food in their freezer and gave it away to locals when the island lost power during a hurricane a few years ago, and his efforts to support the restaurant business when COVID-19 hit and threatened many of his regular haunts.
“He would book parties with them and pre-pay for everything – jeez it is hard to talk about – to help them pay their rent,” Sapp said. “He wouldn’t say he was paying their rent, but that’s basically what he was doing. He booked two parties with us that he didn’t have for a year and a half. He was doing that all over the island. I mean, he’s legit. I’d kill somebody for him.”
Flames fully engulf the St. Simons Island home of Davis Love III in 2020. [Kyle Jurgens, Glynn County Fire and Rescue]On March 27, 2020, 10 years to the day that Southern Soul burned to the ground, Love’s home was destroyed in an early-morning two-alarm fire. Thankfully, no one was injured. Just as Love was the first resident on the scene to lend a helping hand when Southern Soul was engulfed in flames, Sapp and his wife returned the favor, cooking breakfast for the Love family and first responders.
“It was really sad that it happened to him,” Sapp said. “We all sat there and watched it burn.”
But just as Southern Soul came back better than ever, Love has proved he can conquer all. When he speaks of the fire, it doesn’t take long for him to shift the conversation to the outpouring of support his family received.
“I feel so blessed,” he said.
Family keepsakes were lost, but what Love learned to appreciate is that he truly is a beloved member of the community, an island institution every bit as much as the avenue of oaks dripping with moss that stand sentinel at Sea Island’s entranceway, or the bag piper playing at sunset. For Love, this whole island will always be home.
Davis Love III is thankful to be playing golf at Harbour Town, where he is a five-time champion, after his house burned down in March.
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – Packing to play this week in his 31st appearance in the RBC Heritage, Davis Love III could’ve fit all his worldly possessions into one suitcase.
“We didn’t have anything to pack,” said Love, a five-time RBC Heritage champion. “I’m searching for head covers and my son gave me a ball-mark fixer on Sunday evening. I was like, I just don’t have enough equipment to go play a PGA Tour event.”
“The No. 1 question the last two days is, ‘Do you have any putters? Do you have any fishing rods? Do you have,’ — No, I literally — everything was in the house,” Love said. “It’s just one of those times in my life where everybody’s home, you’re doing the Home Depot projects. I was organizing all my fishing tackle. So, none of it was anywhere but in my garage. All my golf equipment was in my garage because I just got back from Bay Hill.”
Love is the unofficial mayor on St. Simons Island and his circle of friends rallied to support his family. The Sea Island Resort golf shop, for instance, was closed due to the pandemic, but its staff emptied the shelves for the Loves in their time of need.
“My daughter gave me a great piece of advice,” Love recounted. “She goes, let people do stuff for you for a change. You’ve done stuff for people your whole life. Even if you don’t need another pack of underwear, let them do stuff for you because it makes them feel good.”
Love said that they recently had bought a house on the island and moved in, and his granddaughters already broke in the pool.
“(PGA Tour vice president of rules) Slugger White just asked me, ‘Are you settled in?’ I said, ‘No, I’m settling. I’m not settled yet.’ It will be a long time until things get settled for us,” Love said. “But we’re moving forward. We’ve got great support at home. It’s just nice to be back out amongst friends.”
A parade of players, including Webb Simpson and Mackenzie Hughes, were among the well-wishers that stopped Love since he arrived at Harbour Town. It reminded him of the outpouring of support he received from his fellow Tour pros at his first tournament back after his father, Davis Love Jr., died in a plane crash in 1988. On that occasion Tour veteran Andy Bean drove him away from the crowd on a golf cart.
“He said, ‘You’re going to have to come up with something to say to everybody because everybody is going to want to say something to you and it’s going to be every week’. So, I’m kind of going to go through that again,” Love explained. “Yesterday I got kind of worn out because I was talking so much to the people who wanted to talk to me.”
Some, such as Tony Finau, also asked for some advice on how to play the famed Pete Dye layout. After all, this week always has been Love’s home away from home.
“A lot of guys think that I have some secret, and I really don’t,” he said.
