Canadian Brooke Henderson Rocketing Up the Rankings in Golf

Smith Falls Ontario native Brooke Henderson is quickly becoming one of the world's top golfers.

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It doesn't get much steadier than this.
Brooke Henderson recorded her seventh straight top 10 finish on the LPGA Tour this past weekend in Hawaii.
Playing the LOTTE Championship for the first time, the talented 18-year-old Smiths Falls native fired a final round 68 (-4) to wind up in a tie for 10th, along with four others including Lexi Thompson of the United States. Henderson's four-day total of 278 (-10) left her six strokes back of champion Minjee Lee of Australia. ...
For her 10th place finish, Henderson earned US$32,224. To date, her earnings this year total US$375,112 from just eight starts on the LPGA Tour. That puts her in eighth place among tour money-earners. Her overall world ranking remained unchanged this week at number seven.

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http://www.insideottawavalley.com/sp...ur-this-season

However, it will be no easy task overtaking #1 Lydia Ko, but Brooke is a determined young woman.

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Henderson, 18, arrives for this week’s Swinging Skirts Classic off her seventh consecutive top-10 finish. She broke through to win the Cambia Portland Classic last August, boosting her rocket ride toward the top 10 in the world. Her ride really started here at Lake Merced Golf Club a year ago, when she arrived at No. 207 in the world. She’s No. 7 now. ...
Henderson substantially boosted her power game in the offseason, going to a 48-inch shaft, the longest the Rules of Golf allow. She used a 47¼ inch shaft on her driver last year, which was already long, about 3 inches longer than the average driver’s shaft in the women’s game. Henderson is averaging 270 yards per drive this season, about 16 yards longer than she averaged last year.
Henderson said the extra length, combined with firmer conditions at Lake Merced, helped her get to places on the course in practice rounds this week that she couldn’t reach last year.

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On the weekend, Henderson had another top 10 finish at the Swinging Skirts Classic. However, more important than that was the mental toughness she displayed by coming back after horrendous holes. It will stand her in good stead in the future.

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With wicked winds (gusts of up to 87 km/h in the area) making it tough just to stand in one place at times, Henderson went bogey, bogey, double bogey from Nos. 11-13 to fall out of the running for a shot at second place.
However, showcasing her perseverance, Henderson bounced back with birdies on Nos. 14 and 16 to extend her string of top-10s to eight straight (nine if you count a European Tour event) tournaments in this, her first full season on the LPGA Tour. Henderson ended up at one-under for the tournament after a four-over 76 in the final round to tie for sixth, eight strokes behind winner Haru Nomura of Japan. ...
Tied for fourth entering the day, Henderson’s ability to rebound after the three-hole stumble allowed her not to fall too far down the leaderboard. It wasn’t too far off her third-place finish here as a non-member last year, which began her remarkable run from No. 207 in the world to No. 7 over the past year.

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http://www.torontosun.com/2016/04/24...h-on-lpga-tour

Brooke Henderson has won her first major at the Women's PGA Championship on Sunday and now ranks number 4 in the world in women's golf.

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Henderson won her first major title Sunday, beating top-ranked Lydia Ko with a birdie on the first hole of a playoff to win the KPMG Women's PGA Championship after overcoming a three-shot deficit on the back nine.
The 18-year-old from Smiths Falls, Ont., ranked No. 4 in the world, closed with a bogey-free 6-under 65 — the best round of the week at Sahalee Country Club — to match Ko at 6-under 278. Ko finished with a 67.
In the playoff on the par-4 18th, Henderson hit her second shot — a 7-iron from 155 yards — to 3 feet, while Ko's second from farther back in the fairway left her with 20 feet. Ko missed to the left, and Henderson tapped in to cap a week that started with a hole-in-one on her fourth hole Thursday and ended with a major championship.
Henderson became the second-youngest winner in a major championship, with Ko the youngest last year in the Evian Championship in France. Henderson also is the second Canadian woman to win a major championship, following Sandra Post's victory in the 1968 event, and is projected to jump from fourth to second in the world on Monday. Her first victory came last year in Portland, Oregon.
"To think about all of the incredible players that have come before me," Henderson said. "I was reading some of the names on this trophy and it's very, very cool."
Ko was bidding to become the fifth player in tour history to win three straight majors. Most times a bogey-free round with four birdies would be enough.
"I'm happy with the way I played. I just got outplayed," the New Zealander said. "For Brooke to shoot 65 on the final day at a major, at a course like this is very impressive."

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http://thechronicleherald.ca/sports/...ns-pga-playoff

A detailed background article on Henderson can be found at the url below, from which I've taken a short quote.

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Ask anyone who knows Henderson well, and they will say her defining strength is her ability to be mentally tough in the moment. But none, not even Henderson herself, seems all that sure where it comes from. She just knows she’s mentally tough, and that it works for her.
It also seems to help that, in her whirlwind of a pro career, where she won last year before even having a Tour card — she was too young to be eligible — Henderson has stuck with the same routines that helped her become a prodigy. Her dad, Dave, is still her main coach, although she has worked for years with Golf Canada’s development program, and she is resolutely someone who has eschewed the technical swing analysis that often makes a golf broadcast sound like an introductory course in mechanical physics. Henderson started working with the national amateur team when she was a 14-year-old with a mismatched set of hand-me-down clubs and she remains the player who had an old seven-wood she could hit 150 yards or 200 yards, depending on what shot she needed.
Asked on Monday if her entrance into the pro ranks, where there are an embarrassment of instructors and coaches and training tools touting an equal amount of techniques, had changed her approach, Henderson responded that, no, it was “very much the same.”
“I don’t like working on technical [aspects],” she said, saying hers was still very much a “feel” game. She’s still doing all the same things she was doing when she first started pursuing a pro career, “just a lot better.” Sahalee, with its tight, tree-lined fairways, was an ideal laboratory for her to test her natural game, and she said there were times when she was hitting all of her shots: high, low, draw, fade. In an era where costly golf academies churn out armies of young players who look like they spent their formative years in a swing factory, Henderson’s old-school game might be just the thing to keep her from the burn out that brings down a lot of young athletic stars. Golf is still fun for her. She doesn’t plan to change that.

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http://news.nationalpost.com/sports/...irst-major-win

While Brooke has recently fallen off a bit from her high level of performance, she is currently ranked # 3 in the world, after being ranked #2 at the beginning of August.

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1. Lydia Ko | NZL
2. Brooke M. Henderson | CAN
3. Inbee Park | KOR
4. Lexi Thompson | USA
5. Sei Young Kim | KOR
6. Hee Young Yang | KOR
7. Ariya Jutanugarn | THA
8.In Gee Chun | KOR
9. Stacy Lewis | USA
10. Anna Nordqvist | SWE
Rankings as of 01/08/2016 01:18:19 EST

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https://www.igfgolf.org/about-golf/r...srolexranking/

Henderson had a year that points towards her being a dominant force in golf for many years to come.

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The 19-year-old from Smiths Falls packed more into one season than some golfers experience over an entire career.
Back home this month for a well-deserved holiday break, Henderson told The Canadian Press she feels more mature as she reaches the end of her remarkable year.
"This year especially gave me a lot of experiences that added a lot of value to who am I am as a person, and what I am on the LPGA Tour," she said in a recent interview. "I'm happy to come home, and I remember where it all began with my family and friends. But at the end of the day I'm just building a better me."
Henderson was the LPGA's Ironwoman in 2016, playing a tour-high 31 events, peaking at No. 2 on the world rankings before finishing eighth. Add to that the Rio Olympics and sponsor commitments and the young Canadian didn't have much time for herself on her first full season on the women's pro circuit. But she believes the gruelling schedule has prepared her for the future.
"Where the tournaments were, what the courses were like, what the fans were like, the atmosphere, the communities around the tournaments, and the travelling — like how to get from one city to another and if it was easy or not — were all really important things to learn," she said. "Now that I've done it, I feel almost like a veteran, where next year is going to be a lot easier."
Henderson won two titles in 2016, including the KPMG Women's PGA Championship, her first career major. She added 15 top-10 finishes and was just two shots out of the bronze medal position at the Olympics.

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http://www.thespec.com/sports-story/...rkable-season/

Brooke Henderson won the Canadian Open today in Regina to become the first Canadian to win a PGA tournament since Jocelyn Bourassa in 1973 and for only the second time among Canadian women. The last Canadian male to win a Canadian Open was Pat Fletcher in 1954, who did it for the first time since 1914.

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This was no tepid performance; Henderson fired a seven-under-par 65 for a four-round number of 267 (21-under)—an unbelievable score given the varying scoring conditions and the hoopla that surrounded her all week. ...

This was no tepid performance; Henderson fired a seven-under-par 65 for a four-round number of 267 (21-under)—an unbelievable score given the varying scoring conditions and the hoopla that surrounded her all week. ...

It hasn't all been champagne and lollypops – there were whispers that she should be higher on the world rankings and a bit more accommodating to fans and media when things weren't going well, for example—but for the most part the plucky kid grew into a business-like champion before the country's eyes.
It was also an emotional ride in both the long view and the short one. Henderson fought back tears during her trophy presentation and later when she talked about her grandfathers, who both died this summer. There were more than a few tears from others: Golf Canada officials could be seen crying after her win and Canadian Golf Hall of Famer Gail Graham, doing the network broadcast, was a teary-eyed picture of joy as Henderson putted out.
Everyone seemed to understand the significance of what Henderson was doing: as she walked up 18, a flock of Canada geese took flight but gave the 18th fairway a wide berth—it was like the birds didn't want to soil the moment.

New national hero
Sunday's victory was Henderson's seventh, including a major championship won two years ago at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship. Sandra Post won eight times, a major included, but women's golf is a far different animal now.
There is little doubt that Henderson's achievement has now put her on her own level among Canadian women, one that is now approaching Mike Weir's eight PGA Tour titles, Masters included, as the best golfer this country has ever produced.

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https://www.cbc.ca/sports/golf/cp-wo...wins-1.4799851

At 24 Brooke Henderson became the first Canadian man or woman to win two majors on the weekend. She also leads in total tour wins among both Canadian men and women.

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Henderson rolled in the birdie putt on the 72nd hole to win the Amundi Evian Championship in France, her first major win in six years, further separating herself from every Canadian golfer to come before her.“To be sitting here a two-time major champion is just an unreal feeling,” the Smiths Falls native said at the winner’s press conference Sunday.
At just 24 years old, Henderson is the first Canadian man or woman to win multiple major championships. Her 12th victory puts her four wins clear of Sandra Post, Mike Weir, and George Knudson on the sport’s top tours.
“In 2016 winning the first major changed my life,” she said of the playoff win over Lydia Ko at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. “My world ranking shot up and I just received a ton more attention from fans and media. It also made me feel like I really belonged out here and that I could contend for big, major championships and compete against the best in the world, which is an amazing feeling.”
Powered by opening rounds of 64-64, Henderson shot a fourth round even-par 71 for a 17-under total, and a one-shot victory over rookie Sophia Schubert (68).
“It was amazing the huge crowds that were out this week, and especially around the 18th hole,” she said. “Over that putt, you know, really I just did not want to go to a playoff. Did not want to play that hole again. So I was like, please go in.”
Majors are won on the back nine on Sunday. That was the mantra going through Henderson’s mind during the final round on the shores of Lake Geneva; which was a good thing considering how the front nine went for her.

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https://www.thewhig.com/sports/local...ro-golf-career