Allisen Corpuz, England’s Jodi Ewart Shadoff and South Korea’s Sei Young Kim shot 7 under par rounds of 65 and are tied at the top of the leaderboard at the FM Championship in Norton, Mass.
Twenty-seven other players are within four shots of the lead as exactly half of the 144-player field played the TPC Boston layout under par.
Corpuz, a native of Honolulu, started on the back nine and birdied three consecutive holes (Nos. 15-17) to get to 4 under par. She recorded four birdies and one bogey on the front nine and closed with a birdie on the par-four ninth hole to post a 65.
Corpuz, 27, had two top tens in the first five weeks of 2025, but has missed the cut in six of her last 10 outings.
“Started out really solid,” said the five-year tour veteran. “Stuck it to three feet on 11, so made a birdie kind of early to start round. Yeah, just putter was rolling really well today. I had a lot of really good looks and got to convert a lot of them.”
Similar to Corpuz, Ewart Shadoff collected eight birdies and one bogey on her round. She finished with a flourish, posting birdies on her final four holes (Nos. 6-9).
“It’s nice. It’s been a while,” said the 37-year old native of Great Britain. “I haven’t played very well for the last 18 months since I got injured, so it’s been a very tough comeback from, you know, very hard times. I didn’t know if I would ever get to shoot a round like today again, but I’m finally kind of mentally feeling better about things and more in control of my game and like how I’m hitting the ball.”
Unlike Corpus and Ewart Shadoff, Kim has been playing solid golf of late, posting third-place finishes in two of her last six tournaments. The 32-year-old birdied seven holes and suffered no bogies in recording her 65.
“This is course not short and not long, so par-5, I wasn’t aggressive that much, but just short game kind of recently I — my short game is little stronger than before so I made a lot of birdie chance from there,” said Kim.
China’s Miranda Wang was all alone in fourth place with a 6 under round of 66.
Eight golfers posted scores of 67, including Americans Gurleen Kaur, Andrea Lee, Madison Young and current World No. 2 Nelly Korda.
Korda is sporting a new Taylor Made blade putter and struck a solid 29 putts en route to her 5 under score.
“Just something new. I had so much success with that head and I hit a couple before Toronto,” said Korda about the new putter. “Wasn’t really sure how I really liked the putter, but I just went with it. I just picked it out of the group of putters that I had and that I liked, and kind of went with it.
“Just needed to feel something different.”
