By: Richard Rapp
rrapp@massgolf.org
FITCHBURG, Massachusetts (August 11, 2026) – Tuesday at the Massachusetts Women’s Amateur, the final round of the stroke play portion of the competition, lacked the dramatic reshuffling that you’d associate with the term “moving day.” For the upper third of the leaderboard, today was more about preparation, lining up the painter’s tape before the brushes come out.
Of the top six stroke play finishers, four of them are past champions, and watching them navigate Oak Hill Country Club on day two, you could sense an air of purposefulness, if not urgency.
Defending champion Isabel Brozena (Indian Ridge Country Club) has been as steady as steady gets, posting back-to-back rounds of even par 72 to earn the 2-seed in match play.
“I mean, you want to be the 1-seed, the 2-seed going in, and so I feel like that’s what I’m playing for, but also you’re just playing to kind of learn the course and prepare yourself best for what to do, what not to do in match play. If someone ends up in a spot you were in and like, you know that’s a tough spot to be, then that’s that’s definitely knowledge that you gain through the first days of stroke play,” said Brozena.
Throughout her 2025 victory at Concord Country Club, Brozena unleashed her uncanny power to overwhelm the golf course and her opponents, and that loud driver trait was on full display at Oak Hill, when, with a crack, she sent her tee ball hurtling down the center of the par-5 10th, slung a draw with a long iron to 10 feet, and holed the putt for eagle. A familiar sight if you watched last year’s Mass Women’s Am.
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Brozena might be playing with a target on her as defending champion, but the vivacious All-Big East player from Xavier University tends to embrace the moment. “It feels almost like a little bit of pressure on my back, but it also feels like huge motivation knowing this is basically the same field. I’m just excited for the week.”
After rounds of 66-73, Molly Smith (Mount Pleasant Golf Club) garnered medalist honors by a commanding five shot margin. Despite several deep runs in this tournament, the title has eluded the University of Central Florida rising senior thus far. Might this be the year? The form is certainly there. Her sister, Morgan Smith (Mount Pleasant Golf Club), is a two-time champion, and looked the part on Tuesday with an even par 72, five shots better than her opening round. “It’s kind of the funny thing about this is you never have an idea how the brackets are going to set, so you’ve just got to try your best on every single shot, and that’s kind of what I was trying to do today…I think that was kind of my goal—just learn some things about the golf course, build my strategy, build my plan, and keep things going for the rest of the week.”
Smith opened with a birdie on the first, then strung together 14 consecutive pars. Paired with the long hitting Brozena and Lillian Guleserian (Blue Hill Country Club), she consistently found herself well behind her competitors off the tee. But her game is one of steely resolve, which helps explain her exceptional match play record. “I think something that I think is helpful in match play is just being able to wear them out. So, I think like today, and having pars—I, you know, I birdied 1 and then I parred every single hole up until 16, bogeyed 16, parred 17 and 18. It was just a really, really steady round of golf. And I think that as the matches go on, strategy becomes a bigger component. But I think being a steady golfer throughout the entire round, that will be a good thing heading into match play,” said Smith.
2023 champion Rebecca Skoler (Pine Brook Country Club) grabbed the 3-seed with rounds of 71-74, and 2018 champion Shannon Johnson (Thorny Lea Golf Club) tied for the low round of the day with an even par 72 to get into a tie for 4th with Guleserian.
Match play begins Wednesday with the Rounds of 32 and 16 and continues until Friday’s 18-hole championship match. Mass Golf will provide live coverage of the entire final match on Instagram.
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