‘It was a mad house:’ RBC Heritage brings thousands of people to restaurants on Hilton Head Island

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, Sc. (WTOC) - With a stacked field of golfers, the hype around the 55th RBC Heritage might have been bigger than any in the tournament’s history.

The crowds that flooded Harbour Town Golf Links are now gone.

“That week is like no other.”

But underneath the famous lighthouse, a local restaurant says the tournament left its mark.

“Between Thursday and Saturday, maybe even Sunday, about 2,500 people were coming through the building daily,” said Max Goodman, the general manager of Quarterdeck.

He says that about 1,000 more customers a day than they saw for 4th of July last year, commonly known as one of the island’s biggest days.

”When we got to the peak of the waitlist, it was anywhere between two, two and a half hours but we were doing our best to get people in anyway that we could.”

The Quarterdeck’s general manager says they tried to serve everyone they could but the restaurant would fill up entirely as early as 3 p.m.

A couple hundred feet away the general manager of Crazy Crab has been here for 37 years and can’t remember a week like the one they just finished.

“The amount of people on the course, in the marina, all of Harbour Town definitely more than ever,” said Marty Pellicci, the general manager of Crazy Crab.

He thinks the weather and high profile golfers are to thank, saying wait times got up to two hours here as well.

”It was a mad house. Lots of people, lots of alcohol and I feel like everybody was really happy this year.”

While both restaurants can exhale a bit, the servers will likely stay busy from now until the end of summer.

“We turn around and it’s an incredibly busy lunch and we have as many reservations as we can take tonight so it’s unrelenting.”

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