Brooke Henderson can’t help but laugh. This year, she knows, has been “weird.”
The Canadian wunderkind is set to tee it up at the AIG Women’s Open this week, the final major of the LPGA Tour season, without her usual summertime fire — results-wise — but with plenty of belief that she’s closer than ever to putting all the pieces together for the final four months of the 2025 campaign.
“It’s been really strange,” Henderson told Sportsnet of her season. “But golf, and life, has a lot of ups and downs. I feel closer now than I have in a long time.”
Henderson remains Canada’s top-ranked female golfer and is, in fact, the only one inside the top 300. But she sits at No. 46 in the world — a number she hasn’t slid to since 2015 when she first turned professional. With August around the corner, the native of Smiths Falls, Ont., hasn’t notched a top-10 finish in a stroke-play event yet (technically she finished tied for ninth at the T-Mobile Match Play in April) and has been a non-factor at the previous four majors, having missed the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open and finishing tied for 44th, 36th and 31st at the Chevron Championship, KPMG Women’s PGA and Amundi Evian Championship, respectively. Henderson also comes in having missed the cut at the AIG Women’s Open the last two seasons.
Alas, Henderson — who is feeling refreshed mentally and physically after a two-week summertime break at home in Canada — comes to Royal Porthcawl in Wales, a first-time Women’s Open venue, knowing exactly what she needs to do to kickstart a successful final third of her year.
“It’s always a big adjustment coming over here, but I feel like having played in a lot of British Open’s now and seeing the different style of courses and just learning those shots from year-to-year, we’re in a better spot than we ever have been,” Henderson said.
Statistically, Henderson — who has made her last four cuts in a row and has notched three top-20s in her last seven starts — has actually had a solid year. It certainly hasn’t been her best, but she is on the positive side of the strokes-gained ledger in basically everything except, somewhat shockingly, ball striking.
A year ago, she was 42nd in strokes gained: approach, and this year she sits 114th in the same stat. Henderson was 56th on Tour in driving accuracy last year and is up to an impressive 10th this year — but she has not been able to convert on the opportunities she keeps giving herself.
“For my career, ball-striking has been a huge strength of mine. So, when it hasn’t been quite as strong, definitely this year but last year a little as well, it changes your game a lot and changes how you look at a lot of things,” Henderson admitted. “Your confidence can dwindle pretty easily when you’re not feeling as confident over a shot as you’re used to. Ball striking is physical, obviously, but it creeps into your mental game. It’s all connected, but it’s been a focus point, especially the last few months and I’m making a lot of progress.”
This week at Royal Porthcawl — which has hosted three Senior British Open competitions, most recently in 2023 — Henderson said she knows there will be plenty of variables that could interfere with the ball-striking stats with humps, bumps, and hidden linksy hollows abound on the layout founded in 1891. Henderson said, while speaking with Sportsnet, she was adjacent to the chipping green at the club and said “you wouldn’t believe” how many of her fellow players were also practicing there.
“Everybody knows you’re going to have to depend on the short game this week,” Henderson said.
Henderson is, however, not the only LPGA Tour mega-star without a win in 2025. World No. 1 Nelly Korda is somehow still searching for her first trophy tilt of the season, a season of parity. The LPGA Tour has had 20 tournaments this season and 21 winners (there was one team event) — something that has never happened before.
Lydia Ko, who won the HSBC Women’s World Championship in March, is the defending champion, while Minjee Lee — who won the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in June — is gunning for the career grand slam. But the shocking favourite this week is 21-year-old Lottie Woad, who is making her major-championship debut as a pro. Woad is on a summertime heater, having finished tied for third at the Evian Championship before winning the KPMG Women’s Irish Open by six shots — both while still an amateur. She turned professional last week and went on to win the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open, just the third golfer in history to win in their first LPGA Tour start as an LPGA Tour member.
Henderson is no stranger to having racked up some serious accomplishments at the beginning of her career either, but she’s in a matured-enough state to know what she needs to do, now, to return to the successful stretch everyone is used to seeing.
“It does feel like it’s been a while that we’ve been saying it’s trending and it’s coming — but it is. I just have to keep going. I just have to try to piece it all together with that good four-days-in-a-row. And just building confidence,” Henderson said. “Coming over here, I don’t have the best track record but I’m trying to be confident, trying to hit the shots I need to and I’m hoping for a solid week here. It would do a lot of good for a lot of reasons — the goal is obviously to play all four days, but to play all four days really solidly.”
TEENAGE TRIUMPH
Henderson is not the only Canadian in the field this week.
Anna Huang, who is just 16, was the medallist at the AIG Women’s Open final qualifier Monday. She topped a field of 107 gunning for the final 17 spots in the final major of the year.
Huang, of Vancouver, plays on the Ladies European Tour and turned professional at the beginning of the year.
“I played in the U.S. Open this year, so this will be my second major championship,” Huang said. “I learned a lot from that week, and bringing more patience into this week will be really helpful.”
from Sportsnet.ca
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