The golf world spotlight flickered away from Rory McIlroy briefly on Sunday when he blew up on the front nine at the Charles Schwab Challenge. There will not be much of a wait before that spotlight returns its focus to McIlroy, who looks like the favorite again this week in the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head Island SC.

McIlroy, who re-started the season carrying an impressive string of seven straight finishes in the top five, dropped from seventh on Sunday morning to 32nd after shooting a six-over 41 on the front. “I just got into a rut and played a bad run of holes, and obviously that put me out of the tournament,” McIlroy told golfchannel.com.

McIlroy comes into the Heritage ranked no. 1 in the world in the Hawley Ratings; it is the spot where he has been ranked without break since July 2019. McIlroy also is no. 1 for this event in the Hawley course fit statistics, meaning that among all players in the field, his game is the best statistical match for what has been successful in this event over the last several years. So, although the Northern Irishman doesn’t have much of a track record here – his only appearance was a finish just barely inside the top 60 as a teenager in 2009 – there are reasons to think a good week may lay ahead of him.

The Harbour Town Golf Links is not especially long – it’s listed at 7099 yards – but it shares significant statistical characteristics with the U.S. Open and Northern Trust courses, which are known for requiring some length and muscle. Those three events, and last week’s Schwab, are the only ones on the Tour where the statistics most highly correlated with success are shots gained off the tee and shots gained putting. Others in the field whose games might be a nice fit for this track include long-ball hitters such as Bryson DeChambeau, Tony Finau, Jon Rahm, and Bubba Watson.

If anything, the field for this event is even stronger than the impressive group that assembled last week for the resumption of PGA Tour play. The Heritage has more of the top 10 players (six, including Hideki Matsuyama, Xander Schauffele, Webb Simpson, and Justin Thomas, plus others named above), more of the top 20 (15) and more of the top 50 (42) than last week’s event. Among that mass of talent, three stand out for continuing last winter’s strong play with a strong re-start in the Schwab. That’s Schwab playoff winner Daniel Berger, whose rank is now 41st after starting the year 75th; Joel Dahmen, in the Schwab top 20 and up from 67th to 43rd in the ratings; and Sungjae Im, in the Schwab top 10, first in the Tour FedEx Cup points race, and up from 32nd to 22nd in the ratings.

Players you might not think of who have some glimmer of hope include Charl Schwartzel and Victor Perez. Schwartzel, the 2011 Masters winner from South Africa, is a good fit for the course and had two top-20 finishes (accompanied by two missed cuts) this winter. Perez, a Frenchman who plays mostly Euro Tour events, is a good fit for the course and was runner-up at Abu Dhabi in January. He missed the cut badly at the Schwab.

In case you missed it, Phil Mickelson (not in the field this week) turns 50 on Tuesday.