Scrambling at the Portland Classic looks like this: Jeeno Thitikul standing just off the 18th green with a one-shot lead and the tournament still alive.
She had already spent Sunday attacking Columbia Edgewater. Six birdies came in her first seven holes. A 25-foot eagle dropped at the 10th. Her driver had plenty of heat, averaging 286 yards during the final round.
None of that made the last hole comfortable.
Thitikul had missed the green. Behind her, Chanettee Wannasaen and Arpichaya Yubol were sitting at 21-under. One careless touch could reopen the tournament.
So Thitikul did what Portland champions have to do. She took two putts from off the green, cleaned up the par and signed for a 64. Her 22-under total won by one.
That closing par gets swallowed by the eight birdies and eagle on her card. It should not.
Columbia Edgewater rewards attack. It also demands an escape plan.
The scorecard sells one story
Look only at the winning scores and Portland appears almost defenseless.
Wannasaen won at 26-under in 2023. Moriya Jutanugarn followed at 22-under. Akie Iwai reached 24-under in 2025, and Thitikul returned the winning number to 22-under this August.
Those are shootout numbers.
They encourage a simple explanation: hit it far, feast on the par fives and keep firing at flags.
Columbia Edgewater certainly gives players permission to attack. The final round in 2026 measured 6,541 yards, short enough by modern LPGA standards to put wedges in plenty of hands. Thitikul said during the week that reachable par fives and shorter approaches made the course scorable for almost everyone.
That last part matters.
If nearly the entire field can reach the same scoring areas, raw distance loses some of its separating power.
A player who drives it 15 yards farther still owns an advantage. Yet she may only turn an eight-iron into a wedge. Meanwhile, a shorter hitter who finds the fairway still gets a realistic birdie look.
The gap narrows.
Then somebody misses a green.
That is when Columbia Edgewater starts asking harder questions.
The misses tell the real story
The greens here average roughly 5,500 square feet, with 54 bunkers crowding the course around them. In a tournament where 20-under may not even secure the trophy, those smaller targets leave very little room for a careless approach.
Picture the problem from a player’s shoes. A wedge flies five yards long and settles beyond the putting surface, while the flag sits close to the back edge. Suddenly, she has almost no green to work with and a downhill run waiting beyond the cup.
On another hole, an approach leaks right and disappears into sand. She steps into the bunker knowing several players around her will have straightforward birdie putts from the same fairway.
Now the round changes.
That is where scrambling earns its value, because the recovery rarely asks for the same shot twice. One lie may require a low spinner that checks after the first bounce. Another demands an open-faced pitch that lands softly before releasing toward the hole. From sand, she may need to splash the ball onto a narrow landing spot and trust the slope from there.
There is little glamour in any of it, and the scorecard barely acknowledges the difficulty. Save par and it simply shows a four.
Miss the six-footer that follows, however, and the damage feels much larger than one stroke. Portland magnifies those mistakes because birdies arrive so frequently around the rest of the course. A bogey can land at the same moment two nearby contenders are making birdie.
That is how a routine miss becomes a two-shot swing in everything but arithmetic.
Thitikul’s 64 showed both sides of Portland
Thitikul did not win because she spent Sunday playing defense.
Far from it.
Starting two shots behind, she birdied the first and then ripped off five straight from Nos. 3 through 7. She turned the opening seven holes into a sprint and forced everyone else to chase.
Then came the part of the round that matters more to this argument.
A bogey at nine interrupted the charge. At the 512-yard par-five 10th, her drive finished in the left rough rather than the fairway. Thitikul still produced a superb second shot, reached the green and buried a roughly 25-foot eagle putt.
Power helped create that chance.
Skill finished it.
Another bogey came at the 12th. Thitikul answered with birdie at 14, but the tournament kept tightening behind her. Wannasaen was tearing through the course with a 63. Yubol stayed close.
Around the 15th green, Thitikul’s caddie alerted her to how tight the leaderboard had become.
Now every imperfect shot carried teeth.
The quiet par that kept the tournament alive
The 16th never became the highlight of Thitikul’s round, but the par she saved there may have been one of its most useful moments. It kept the card intact while the pressure climbed, and one hole later she curled in the birdie that supplied the eventual winning margin.
By the time she reached 18, there was nowhere left to hide.
Thitikul missed the green again, but she did not panic, chase a heroic finish or turn the mistake into something larger. She handled the recovery, made par and walked away with her 10th LPGA Tour victory.
Her final-round line tells the whole story: eight birdies, one eagle, two bogeys, 14 greens hit and 26 putts. She could overpower stretches of Columbia Edgewater. She could also survive the four greens she missed.
That combination won.
Calling this course a power test misses half the championship.
Akie Iwai had already shown the formula
A year earlier, Akie Iwai won Portland in a different way.
Her final-round 66 contained six birdies and no bogeys. She birdied both 17 and 18 to finish at 24-under, four shots clear of Gurleen Kaur.
The more revealing number came from the rest of the week.
Iwai made only two bogeys in 72 holes.
Her last one came on the second hole Saturday. From there, she played 34 consecutive holes without dropping a shot. She also led the field with 26 birdies.
That is Portland golf stripped to its essentials.
Of course a champion needs birdies. Iwai made plenty. What separated her was how rarely anything went backward.
Not every one of those pars required a miraculous chip or bunker escape, so it would be wrong to credit scrambling alone. The larger lesson still holds. When a golf course gives elite players this many scoring opportunities, the contender who limits damage forces everyone else to play nearly flawless golf.
One saved par does not look important on Thursday. By Sunday evening, four or five of them can become the winning margin.
That same tension appears in individual holes, too. Nowhere does Columbia Edgewater expose it more clearly than the par-five 10th, where power can create an eagle chance and one loose shot can erase the advantage just as quickly.
The 10th hole exposes the power argument
At 512 yards for the 2026 tournament, the 10th practically invites aggression. A long drive gives players a chance to reach in two. An eagle can flip a leaderboard before the next tee shot.
Thitikul proved that herself.
After bogeying nine, she attacked 10 and made eagle. The response changed her round.
Yet her tee shot had found rough.
That detail matters.
Distance created the opportunity to keep attacking. Control from an imperfect lie allowed her to use it.
Another player can hammer a drive down there, miss the second shot in the wrong spot and suddenly face a delicate recovery just to protect birdie. The hole does not stop rewarding power. It simply refuses to let power finish the job alone.
That distinction runs through Columbia Edgewater.
Drive it farther and you gain options. Miss badly and those options disappear. Recover cleanly and the hole remains yours.
The next winner will need more than speed
Power will keep mattering at the Portland Classic. Modern LPGA golf guarantees it. Players who drive farther can attack par fives with shorter clubs, create steeper landing angles and leave themselves more wedge opportunities. Nobody should mistake scrambling for permission to hit the ball poorly.
But Columbia Edgewater changes the hierarchy of mistakes. The course lets so many players make birdies that simply creating chances does not provide enough separation. The champion has to preserve them. She needs to walk away from a missed green with par while another contender turns the same mistake into bogey.
Thitikul offered the perfect snapshot on Sunday. Her eagle at 10 was spectacular, the front-nine birdie barrage built the round and her birdie at 17 supplied the winning stroke. Yet the tournament still reached the 18th with no room left: one shot, one missed green and one recovery between Thitikul and a possible playoff.
She handled it.
That is why scrambling carries so much weight at the Portland Classic. The long hitters will keep producing the shots that make highlight reels, and the leaderboard will keep filling with red numbers. Yet the trophy often depends on something quieter: a wedge opened just enough, a chip dying beside the cup or a six-footer saved after the approach went wrong.
At Columbia Edgewater, everybody expects to make birdies.
The champion is usually the player who knows what to do when she doesn’t.
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FAQs
Why does scrambling matter at the Portland Classic?
Columbia Edgewater gives players plenty of birdie chances. Strong scrambling keeps a missed green from becoming the bogey that costs valuable ground.
Who won the 2026 Portland Classic?
Jeeno Thitikul won at 22-under after closing with a 64. She finished one shot ahead of Chanettee Wannasaen and Arpichaya Yubol.
How did Jeeno Thitikul win the Portland Classic?
Thitikul made eight birdies and an eagle in the final round. She also protected her lead with crucial pars after missing greens late.
Why is Columbia Edgewater good for low scoring?
The course gives LPGA players manageable scoring opportunities and reachable par fives. That makes birdies common and magnifies the cost of bogeys.
How dominant was Akie Iwai at the 2025 Portland Classic?
Iwai finished at 24-under and made only two bogeys all week. She played her final 34 holes without dropping a shot.
