Bo lauds Henderson’s ‘pure talent’
Canadian golfer impresses legendary two-sport star during pro-am event
Bo knows talent. OLYMPIA FIELDS, ILL
And Bo Jackson, arguably the greatest living athlete of our time, sees it in Brooke Henderson.
Jackson, so supremely gifted he was named to both the NFL’s Pro Bowl and Major League Baseball’s all-star game and was a marketing powerhouse in the 1980s, was teamed up with Henderson, Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux and KPMG executive John Veihmeyer in the pro-am at the KPMG Women’s PGA on Tuesday.
Jackson, 54, watched Henderson, the defending KPMG PGA champ, bomb drives and sink putts at the Olympia Fields Country Club and even gave her a nickname: “Showtime.”
“That’s just pure talent. Pure talent, that’s all it is,” he said after 18 holes with Team Henderson: Brooke, sister Brittany on the bag and dad/coach Dave.
“We had a wonderful time. Brooke, Britt and her crazy dad. They need to get him off the caffeine. They need to lay him off the caffeine.”
How about the nickname? Showtime?
“Just watching her play. It’s real exciting to watch her hit the ball,” Jackson said. “She hits the ball farther than we do.”
Jackson, standing along the fence by a practice putting green, then turned to Henderson who was signing autographs near by.
“I like playing with you,” Jackson said to her. “I like playing with you. We had a wonderful time this afternoon.”
Henderson was born three years after Jackson’s athletic career ended in 1994, slowly done in by a hip injury he suffered while playing for the Oakland Raiders in a playoff game in 1991.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have an appreciation for what he accomplished and the opportunity to play golf with him.
Henderson said she was arriving at the course at the same time as Jackson on Tuesday morning.
“I was walking in and he was just kind of walking, carrying his golf bag. I saw him and said ‘hi’ and he said, ‘I know you.’ That’s pretty cool and then he said he was Bo Jackson. As soon as he said his name, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really cool.’ I went over to my phone and I looked him up and yeah, it was actually Bo Jackson. To get to play with him and Greg was amazing.”
Jackson, whose swing is hampered by a bad shoulder that he’ll have surgically repaired in a couple of weeks, still showed that athletic ability, muscling the ball off the tee and showing some nice touch on the greens.
Maddux, who won 355 games in the big leagues, was once ranked the second-best golfer among baseball players by PGA.com, with a 3.9 handicap index.
“They’re great golfers and playing with people of that calibre, who were all-stars in their sports, multiple sports, to be able to play 18 holes and have some fun and talk, it was an amazing experience,” Henderson said. “I’m really happy I got that opportunity.”
Playing with people of that calibre ... to be able to play 18 holes and have some fun and talk, it was an amazing experience.
As Henderson’s own star grows brighter, she’s getting more and more opportunities like this. On the 15th tee Tuesday, former Chicago Bears star linebacker Brian Urlacher, playing a nearby hole, went out of his way to walk over and give Henderson a hug. They played together earlier this year at the Diamond Resorts Invitational celebrity tournament.
“I got to play with some really cool people this year,” she said. “I would never have imagined it, and playing such an incredible golf course like this and playing it in the KPMG PGA — and defending it, of all things — and playing with people like that is incredible.
“It’s hard to believe sometimes. I’m just trying to soak it all in and embrace it because it’s a really neat opportunity that not a lot of people get.”