The FM Championship

Thursday, August 28, 2025

I can sort of never get over how different it is to volunteer as a walking scorer at the LPGA FM Championship at TPC Boston than it is to be a mobile Marshal crew leader for the PGA. Part of the difference is the appearance of TPC Boston at this event, with the nearly complete absence of built-out infrastructure, far fewer corporate pavilions, grandstands, and vendor exhibits. Far fewer people in the galleries as well. But mainly, it’s the difference between the actual job of being a scorer versus a Marshal. Instead of walking inside the ropes with a crew of anywhere from 2 to 8 Marshals, I’m inside the ropes “alone”, just me and the three players and their respective caddies. We didn’t even have a standardbearer with us today. Since none of the players in my group were in the top echelon, we basically had the course to ourselves, virtually no gallery. It was only later when I watched the playback on Golf Channel that I saw that there were actually thousands in attendance, but they must’ve been on the other side of the course! It was a pleasant walk in the sun on a perfect late August Thursday. Of course, the responsibility of being the scorer required my absolute focused attention to record each and every shot from each and every position on the course and accurately enter it into the handheld iPhone scoring device. My player group consisted of Yahui Zhang, China; Kate Smith-Stroh, Detroit Lakes, MN; & Brittany Altomare, Shrewsbury, MA. They were all extremely pleasant to be around for 18 holes, introducing themselves to me at the first hole, both players and caddies. As volunteers we are instructed beforehand to not chat up any of the players in order to avoid distracting them, so there was no chitchat with them throughout the day. Although none of them scored really well on the leaderboard (the best of the bunch at the end of the day at even par), it was terrific to watch them play at such a high level from my vantage point in the fairway alongside them. I wasn’t absolutely certain I’d accurately recorded all 18 holes worth of golf for all the players (219 shots!), but once we got to the scoring area, everything matched up perfectly. All three players thanked me for my help, then it was a handshake and goodbye. I returned my scoring device and radio to Scoring Central and was reassured that the schedule for tomorrow was certain, (unlike last year!)