The FM Championship    Thursday   August 29, 2024

One fantastic advantage of being a walking scorer was knowing your tee time in advance rather than being in the dark (literally) and not having to be on site at 6 am to then receive your assignment, as I've reported multiple times in this blog.  Today I knew we'd be teeing off at 12:26 pm, giving me a relaxed morning before I had to drive the 75 miles from the Cape to TPC Boston.   Such a luxury!  

The scoring officials are pretty guarded with the equipment and won't let you pick it up until 30 minutes prior to your tee time.  I grabbed some lunch at the concession stand and sat outside the volunteer center in perfect summer conditions, much less humidity than yesterday, twenty degrees cooler.  At the appointed time, I got my radio but was informed that I'd be issued a special scoring device down at the first tee, a GPS player tracking system.  I thought to myself "I'm not ready for any upgraded special device, just give me the old one I'm barely used to!"  I got a ride from "Chewie", the scoring committee co-chairperson, down to tee #1.  He'd worked several Travelers and FedEx events and we had a lot of mutual acquaintances although we'd never met up til now.  Great guy!  At the 1st tee, two technical specialists were handling the scoring devices, which involved attaching a small GPS tracker to the waistbands of the player's outfits, about the size of a pack of gum.  This was a new device rollout evidently, there were only nine in use.  I heard that some players refused to be bothered with wearing the device, fearing it might fall off or something during play.  One of the tech guys pulled me aside and asked that I warn players to be careful with the device when they head to the porta-potty! Yeah right!  On our end, the scoring device interface was identical except for now having a "tap in" feature to streamline the process of recording putts.  I was thankful I didn't have to learn a new system, especially since today's round would involve tracking every shot of three players. 

Jiwon Jeon, Yan Liu, and Celine Borge made up our threesome.  I'd never heard of any of these players, thankfully the caddy bibs and golf bags had the player names in view. Accurately identifying who hit which shot in order to enter into the device was challenging initially.   The learning curve was in play but by about the third hole I was settling into a routine.  Walking with the players in order to see every single shot was a thrill but also required a continuous focus.  I got to closely witness some incredible shot making skills from each of these players.  It was an even better experience than being a mobile marshal.  

On the 9th tee, one of the GPS tech guys showed up, stating we had a problem.  For a moment I thought I'd somehow made an error in the scoring process but he reassured me that the device itself wasn't transmitting its GPS data, not my fault.  He took over the scoring function while we walked all of the ninth and tenth holes, eventually having to call in his counterpart as to reboot the device.  All was well by the 11th hole, but... 

At the turn we were joined by a walking NBC spotter who was sent to observe Borge's play as she was climbing the leader board at -3.  Although initially seeming to be a congenial presence in our group,   "NBC lady" soon began peppering me with questions about each players score, their place on the leader board, and even course details, ie., "Is this a par 3 or 4?"  She would then report in to her producer, who would ask for more info, then turn to me for an answer.   It was distracting but tolerable for a couple of holes but then Borge lost her ball in the right rough on 12, I was the one who eventually located it.  Meanwhile, I'd missed that Jeon had played a provisional ball, not her original shot, which meant I had to enter a scoring correction.  This took me 2 holes to accomplish as NBC lady continued to pester me with questions.  Finally, I had to cut her off, I had enough to worry about doing my own job, not her's as well.  I felt badly having to ask her to back off but it had to be done.  By this time my confidence in using the scoring device was great or these situations would have soured me on the process.  

On the 15th hole, a rules official put our group on the clock, specifically citing Yan Liu for slow play.  We were shadowed by rules for the remainder of the round, the players responding with a noticeable improvement in pace of play.  At the scoring area Liu and multiple officials ended up having a lengthy discussion about whether a penalty would be issued, therefore changing her score in my device.  Mike May, the LPGA chief of scoring had me stand by for 30 minutes while this discussion was going on, but eventually he
relieved me of duty, stating he'd handle it from here, and that I did an excellent job, especially with some complicated scoring issues.