HENDERSON EARNS LPGA LEGITIMACY
Overwhelming victory in Portland guarantees her playing card for 2016
When Brooke Henderson, barely into her teens, joined Golf Canada’s elite amateur program in 2012, she had what women’s team coach Tristan Mullally calls a “hodgepodge” of clubs in her bag. Some seemed too heavy, or too long, or both, for a 14- yearold of modest size, and there were assorted brands and grips and designs.
“It was kind of like, ‘ How in the world is she this good with these clubs?’ ” Mullally says of those early days.
But that idiosyncratic bag matched her style. She had a seven wood that she could hit 150 yards, or 200 yards, depending on what shot she needed. She could bend it left or right, high or low.
It was the product of a golfing life, alongside her older sister, Brittany, and her parents in Smiths Falls located about 45 minutes outside Ottawa.
“She was someone who grew up knowing it was fun to hit stupid shots,” Mullally says.
That shotmaking gift turned into a stellar — but very brief — amateur career and now, a perfectly crazy first season as a pro in which she has bounced from tour to tour and across oceans and, still just 17 — she turns 18 in September — has become the youngest Canadian golfer to win a top- tier event with her LPGA victory in Portland on Sunday.
The eight- shot win at the Cambia Portland Classic, one in which she says she didn’t feel nerves until the 18th hole in the final round, was nicely representative of a season that looks like it was designed by a masochist. Having been denied last year for an exemption from the LPGA’s age limit of 18, Henderson has played on the Symetra Tour, one step down from the LPGA, while also trying to play her way into LPGA events through Monday qualifiers, and taking the odd sponsor exemption when available.
In typical fashion, she came to Portland planning to caddy for Brittany, who was already in the field, but first she would try to qualify herself on Monday. She shot 68 to play her way in, which meant both sisters were suddenly in need of caddies. Their father, Dave, flew in to take Brittany’s bag while family friend Bunk Lee would handle the duties for Brooke.
From that scrambled beginning, Henderson would shoot 66- 67- 65 to open a five- shot lead through three rounds, then cruise to an eight- shot win with a 69. Morgan Pressel, who began Sunday as Henderson’s closest pursuer, five shots back, ended up 11 strokes adrift. It was a straightup thumping.
It was also a fairly convincing indictment of the LPGA’s decision to rebuff Henderson’s appeal for membership, which has consisted of two stages. The first was the denial, the second was her proving them wrong almost immediately. At her first LPGA event this year in San Francisco, Henderson led going into the weekend and finished third. She had two other top- five finishes before Portland, including at the U. S. Women’s Open, and made the cut at the British Women’s Open.
Even without the win on Sunday, she was poised to finish in the top 40 on the LPGA money list and secure a tour card for 2016. The win not just makes the card a formality, it moves her into the top 20 in the world rankings, a jump of more than 200 spots from when she turned pro late last year.
The win also means, in theory, that the LPGA would have no choice but to grant her membership immediately should she petition for it now, although Henderson, in typical fashion for her, demurred all attempts on Monday to determine her next move.
On a conference call with reporters, she would say only that she and her family were “still thinking about the petition option,” a response that echoes her vague responses last year to whether she intended to turn pro or accept a scholarship to the University of Florida.
Henderson is long off the tee, but short on words. The petition option would seem an obvious move if only because it would remove the uncertainty around her schedule and the hassle of Monday qualifiers — and it would presumably allow Brittany to nail down the services of a caddy who wouldn’t bail and then beat her in the tournament — but holding off membership until next year would allow her to take a run at the 2016 rookie of the year title.
There’s also the fact that, crazy as her schedule has looked, it has worked out OK. “It’s been a lot of fun,” Henderson said on Monday, explaining that the good result in San Francisco in April gave her confidence for the rest of the season. “I knew I could compete against the world’s best,” she said. Even if the LPGA hadn’t figured it out yet.
And now, she looks for backtoback LPGA wins at this week’s Canadian Pacific Women’s Open in Coquitlam, B. C. Next month, when she turns 18, she’ll be playing in France in the Evian Championship, the LPGA’s final major of the season.
She’ll be playing in those for a longtime to come.