The FM Championship 

August 30, 2026  

Final day of the FM championship. I factored in some extra time to accommodate what I thought would be a significant delay at volunteer parking at Norton high school. The championship organizers had addressed the problem by recruiting a fleet of small airport style vans, which resulted in no waiting for transport up to volunteer HQ. Consequently I arrived way too early, well before 8 AM. My check-in time at scoring was 9:20 so I passed the time having a second breakfast and reading 1440.  When the time came I picked up my radio and scoring device and met my sign bearer for the day, Margaret, a sixtyish extremely nice lady from East Providence with two years experience at the tournament. We worked exceptionally well together and were able to corroborate player scores smoothly, including a couple of instances of correcting some discrepancies. Our players for this final round:    Yan Liu, China; Mao Saigo, Japan; & Brooke Matthews, Arkansas.

 It was nice to start off at the first tee, which had a lively gallery of 50 people. The usual player and caddy greetings went well with handshakes all around. It was a perfect late summer day but eventually a hot 84 degree wind started blowing strongly. I found that I had to resist the inclination to casually chat with Margaret along the way to avoid becoming distracted. This was compounded on the back nine when Don, a volunteer spotter working for Golf Channel joined us since Brooke Matthews was going on a birdie run. Now I had double distractions, but they both knew I had to fully attend to every single shot made by the three players, especially on the greens. They also tended to rely on me to verify their scores, especially all the birdies being made by Matthews.  She had five on the back nine to go -9 and finish T6. Unfortunately, it was too late in the round for us to get on the Golf Channel feed and I could tell Don was disappointed, never getting on camera. Liu and Saigo both finished at -3. 

I repeatedly enjoyed those moments when it was just me on the fringe of a green, the three players, three caddies, going through the whole process of putting out. As each one finished, they wouldn’t wait for the others, walking to the next tee so it would often be just me and the player and caddy at the green until the hole was completed, and the final putt was registered in the device.

Once finished, at the 18th hole scoring desk, Yan Liu gave Margaret and me an autographed ball each, signed elaborately in Chinese script with a small flower and smiley face. I asked her caddie to take our photo and he happily obliged.