Henderson and life in the spotlight
Young Canadian golfer must develop her game under a brighter spotlight
She signed her scorecard and was headed for the parking lot, or maybe lunch, when a Golf Canada official told her to hang on a sec, because a throng of media people were waiting to talk to her.
“Really?” Brooke Henderson said.
Well, yes. When you’ve just won an LPGA tournament at age 17 and been granted full membership in the world’s elite professional golf ranks, and you’re playing a home game in your national Open championship, and you’re hanging right on the cutline on Friday afternoon ... but all this will come to her, in time.
The hard part, she is fast figuring out.
Like how each stroke is a precious object, to be held onto fiercely and never given away without a struggle.
It was that kind of day for the blond teenager from Smiths Falls — the nascent Genie Bouchard of Canadian golf, if that’s still okay to say — as she picked her way through the obstacle course of the Vancouver Golf Club, grinding away at par, trying not to let herself fall below the cut. It was a near thing. An erratic round of 75 left her at one-over-par 145, right on the number, and she had to be extra good on the closing holes, including a delicate up-and-down out of the greenside rough for par at her final hole, the severely canted 9th, to survive to play the weekend.
“I just knew I needed to hit a good shot in there and unfortunately I didn’t,” she said. “It was a tricky up-and-down. I played really smart with that chip and was happy to make that putt. Wasn’t a great day out there, but I ground it out pretty well.”
Playing alongside world No. 3 Stacy Lewis made for heady company, but Lewis thought the kid handled it nicely.
“I thought she did good,” said Lewis, whose rounds of 68-70 have her hanging around the lead until late finisher Candie Kung shot 64 to leapfrog everyone.
“Yesterday you could tell she was pretty nervous. I told her afterwards, I said, ‘I do this a lot. You know, they are going to cheer for you whether you hit a good one or a bad one, so you might as well just hit a good one.’
“She was smiling a little bit more out there today and kind of enjoying it, which was good to see. She’s learning and she’ll get there.”
Starting on the back nine, Henderson was three over at the turn, and four over when she drove into the right rough on No. 1, and had no angle to the green, leading to another bogey.
They are going to cheer for you whether you hit a good one or a bad one, so you might as well just hit a good one.
But she played the remaining holes one under par, including birdies at the 4th, where she hit her approach to three feet, and the par-five 6th, where two enormous shots left her less than 50 yards from the green at the 605-yard hole.
That got her back inside the cut and she had no further adventures until the 9th, when a less than perfect chip could have run 20 feet past the hole. She feathered her wedge shot to four feet and made the putt right in the middle of the cup to make the cut.
“When I was making a couple of bogeys there on the front nine, I was like, ‘You’re getting pretty close,’ and then I kept making more bogeys, so I was like ‘Uh-oh,’” she said, sounding very much like the teenager she is.
There is no escaping what it means to the crowds navigating the rolling hills in the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam to see her hitting quality shots, making putts, being Our Girl among all those Tour-hardened veterans and not letting the expectations overwhelm her.
“To see that many people out cheering me on is really cool. I think it is a much different atmosphere than if I was playing across the border. Same conditions, just different crowd,” Henderson said.
It is not an insignificant amount of pressure, though. Five days removed from winning the Cambia Portland Classic and its $195,000 first prize, she is feeling the effects of a great deal happening in her life very quickly.
“Today I think she just ran out of gas a little bit. You could definitely tell from the quick turnaround we had last night, she was pretty tired from last week,” said Lewis.
“But she’s definitely talented. Definitely plays like a 17-year-old, kind of going at every pin and not really knowing when to reel it back, and that’s going to hurt you on this golf course. But she’ll learn that.”
She’ll learn to handle the demands on her time, too.
“It’s been really busy. I’ve had a lot of attention and lot of things I’ve had to do over the last couple of days,” Henderson said. “That’s no excuse for how I played today but hopefully I’ll get used to all that attention because hopefully I’ll be winning more often.”
It won’t happen this week — she’s too far back, with too many good players ahead of her now — but we’ve already seen her hit it long and straight, and grind out a score, and not fold under pressure. All good things. At 17, or any age.