Flagship tournament

Miyu Yamashita wins by NINE in Canada. Nice RTL top 10 winner, lol! Where was that game at the AIG Women’s Open? Quad on the final hole Friday at Royal Lytham and St. Anne’s to miss the cut only to come back in her next start and win by more than a touchdown! The LPGA is a defined class system. The elite players are in another stratosphere when they use their superpowers. Yamashita, Nelly Korda, Haeran Ryu, and Jeeno Thitikul can really separate. That’s why if you ever get an LPGA outright over 25-1, it is worth celebrating. Miyu made 28 birdies and five bogeys in route to winning. She is back and so are the rest of the LPGA’s elite class descending upon Norton, Massachusetts, a southern suburb of Boston.

The LPGA should designate the FM Championship as a flagship event. A field of 144 players, 23 of the top 25 in the Rolex World Rankings, are playing at TPC Boston. Once host to 17 PGA TOUR events, FM Global has made this TPC venue their annual home. Now the third edition of this summer-ending event, Haeran Ryu (2024) and Miranda Wang (2025) are the two past winners. The top 65 and ties compete over the weekend for $4.4 million, and our third FM Champion will receive a check for $660,000. The presenting sponsor, FM Global, has done an incredible job supporting women’s professional golf. Beyond this week’s tournament, FM is providing the extra coverage we have seen all year across multiple streaming platforms and linear TV of the LPGA. That’s why this event has quickly become one of the premiere events on the schedule. What better way to challenge the PGA TOUR’s season-ending championship than to have the 10 best female players in the world compete!

Great Woods

Thirteen of the 17 trips the PGA TOUR made to TPC Boston were FedEx Cup playoff events. A par 72 layout for the ladies, it measures 6,533 yards on the official scorecard. For stretching over 6,500 yards, the par 4 average is only 385 yards. Seven of the 10 par 4s measure under 400 yards. A large part of the reason why the average winning score after two editions is 18 under par. Players can make a bunch of sub-par scores on this course. Managing your bogeys is another important part of this conversation, but we’ll get deeper into the skills needed to win in the outright conversation. Twenty-eight acres of fairway are framed by bunkers, native areas, and trees. There are 58 bunkers total and 10 holes where water comes into play. True to a traditional New England design, the green complexes are small. The average putting surface is 5,500 sq/ft and they are covered in beautiful Bentgrass. The region has received a fair amount of precipitation in August (2.52″).

Course Conditions, Weather, Wind

The forecast for the FM in Norton, MA calls for temperatures in the low 80s. We’ve felt some rain this week, and more is expected on Thursday into Friday. Friday looks like there’s a 40% chance of getting wet for most of teh field. Saturday and Sunday are also showing a slight chance of rain in the 15-20% range. The TPC Boston region is 5.5″ of rain behind YTD, but the summer has been wet. The wind prediction for the week is light. Most days it will blow in the single digits with gusts barely getting to 15 mph. When the wind blows, it will be coming out of the south and southwest.

The wet weather will make the scoring surfaces softer. That’s a massive opportunity for the best ball strikers. The variety of shots TPC Boston asks you to hit makes it a wonderful venue for professional players. An original Arnold Palmer design, Gil Hanse and Brad Faxon renovated the course and gave it a great facelift. Now the players are forced to shape the ball and hit shots of varying heights. Major champions make up a number of the names at the top of both final leaderboards. Remember Carlton Woods where they played the Chevron for a couple of years? That’s a great comp course along with Lake Nona to start the schedule back in January and the season-ending tour championship host course; Tiburon. Courses with trouble surrounding almost every landing area. Play aggressively, find the fairway, you will be rewarded. Not many courses offer so many different styles of scoring chances. Risk-reward decision-making has become the DNA of the FM Championship. That’s great for the fans who definitely show up in Boston. This is the only professional golf event of the year they get to see. The final holes provide an incredible amphitheater effect as 16, 17, and 18 are all within close proximity to one another. While just 30 men provide the theater in Atlanta, a full field in New England gives us the best opportunity to bring home a much larger winning ticket.

How to win?

There are two ways one can attack TPC Boston from a scoring perspective. Players can implement a conservative game plan and play to larger landing areas off the tee and the middle of the green. The second strategy is to attack edges in the fairway, create shorter approaches, and more scoring chances. Feel free to go the conservative route, but I don’t think that gets you across the finish line in first place. There are too many elite power players in this field to hold back and believe you can create enough birdie opportunities with a longer club on approach. At some point, you will have to challenge these doglegs, go after the par 5s in two, and fire at the reachable holes. Nelly, Charley, and Haeran are all too good to lay back. Couple the competitive atmosphere with the notion that this is the last warmup before the Solheim Cup. Pressure is on a bunch of players to perform or just get their game in order. Those team match play events are not about laying up. Match play pushes the aggressive nature of the game, and I believe that mindset will be shared by many at TPC Boston.

Off the tee, I am looking for players who use the driver as a scoring weapon. Those who are able to send it far and straight. I’m taking into consideration SG: OTT and Total Driving for TPC Boston. Twelve of the 14 fairways bend in some fashion. Some present a severe dogleg. The more comprehensive you can be driving the ball, the better. I’m looking at comp courses such as Shadow Creek, Lake Nona, Carlton Woods, Royal Mayfair, Evian, and Blythefield CC. If you can attack those courses off the tee, you are set up for success at TPC Boston. The main reason why you must push it down the fairway are these small green surfaces. The shorter the iron you are using to attack with, the better your chances are to increase your overall proximity to the hole. The average par 5 is 503 yards. Longer players have a huge advantage on the 5s as two of them are guarded by a penalty area in front of the green limiting those who can go for them in two.

The last two top 10s have hit an average of 79% of their GIRs. That’s a significant number because the overall size of these putting surfaces says those are legitimate birdie putts. When you consider the shape and contour of the greens, they get even smaller. There are outcroppings and false fronts. A few of the greens are above you on approach, and a few drop below. TPC Boston constantly calls for adjustments. This is why the best approach players perform so well here. You must control the ball flight and spin. That second skill will be tested as the region has received rain, and the course will see more during the championship. Soft greens will favor the best approach players, allowing them an opportunity to create two dozen birdie chances (or more). Those two top 10s have gained twice as many strokes on the field with their irons than they have OTT or ARG. Small greens do call for a couple of timely chips (and pitches), but overall short game has not been the deciding factor at the FM. With so many short approaches, if you start missing the putting surface, you cannot create enough sub-par scoring chances to contend.

Scoring at TPC Boston starts with the par 5s. LPGA officials have routinely set these holes up to be easy. A bad swing, and you could be in a penalty area, but the best ball strikers will eat these holes up. Bentgrass greens will roll true, and with the recent weather they have received, the greens are in stellar shape. The best Bentgrass(northern grass) putters we have seen over the past two weeks are a great starting point for this skill list. Toss in those who have performed well here in the past, and you have plenty of options for an outright card. I have played TPC Boston many times, and it is a really fun golf course. There are so many creative ways everyone can score. The terrain pushes and pulls the ball toward the hole and the landing areas at times. Put together some solid contact, and you can have a career day. I always felt driving the ball was the most important attribute, and that’s why I started my outright skill list there. You’ll s card favors power and putting. Put those two skills together this week, and you’ll get to 20 under par!

LPGA – Free Picks

Ruoning Yin (+2600 DraftKings)

I’m excited to back Ruoning Yin this week. One of the best approach players on the LPGA, Yin is coming off a T20 in Portland and a T4 in Canada. When ball strikers like Yin start to pop on the leaderboard, that means the putter is rolling. Ruoning was the T2G leader in Edmonton, gaining over 11 strokes on the field. Her flatstick was positive, and thus the top 5. To tip the scales more in her favor, she can scramble and score on the 4s. Let’s ride with one of the most well-rounded T2G women on tour.

Rose Zhang (+7600 DraftKings)

Rose Zhang has a knack for contending in the more meaningful LPGA events on the calendar. Recently selected to the Solheim Cup team, Zhang has all the motivation she needs (and more) to win the FM Championship. Eighth place in Portland two weeks ago, Rose finished fifth in Boston last year. Ranked fourth on the tour for approach, these small targets will allow Zhang to separate from the field. A top 10 T2G player as well, the complete package is fired up and ready for this week and Team USA!