Brooke Henderson could barely vote the last time she was at Sahalee Country Club. Still figuring out how to be a professional golfer at 18, she did know one thing pretty well by that point already — how to win.
She had a “perfect week” at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in 2016, the last time it was at the venerable pacific northwest layout, defeating Lydia Ko in a playoff to win her first major championship.
Upon returning this week, the club bestowed her an honorary membership and dropped a plaque in the fairway from where she hit her approach shot to set up her tournament-winning birdie.
“It definitely changed my life back in 2016,” Henderson said. “I received a lot more attention from the fans and the media and just what I believed I could do moving forward I think changed. I felt like anything was possible after this victory.
“I feel like it’s been a great career and a great journey since then, and I’m excited to be back here and to have the opportunity to tee it up tomorrow and try to shoot four low scores and try to do it again.”
Henderson started the 2016 edition of this major championship as the first-round leader and made a hole-in-one that day (she won a car and gifted it to her sister/caddie, Brittany — who still drives it). She struggled over Friday and Saturday but zipped up the leaderboard with a final-round 65, the low round of the day. She defeated Ko, who was also 18, after making birdie on the first extra hole.
The pair didn’t meet that week but Henderson recalls the first time she was impressed by Ko was at the CPKC Women’s Open a few years prior.
“I was playing in my first one and I was 14 and she won that week — and she was 15. I thought I was doing pretty well just by being there,” Henderson said with a laugh.
“Her career has been phenomenal, and winning here in 2016, being able to beat the No. 1 player in the world at the time, somebody that I looked up to, it was a huge turning point in my career. Gave me a lot of the confidence and momentum.”
Henderson, Ko, and Ariya Jutanugarn (who finished third, just one shot out of the playoff) are grouped together in a tidy throwback for the first two rounds this year.
Henderson has yet to find the winner’s circle on the LPGA Tour this season but has put together plenty of positive pieces to this point — and certainly as compared to 2023, results-wise. Henderson has five top-10s this year (she had just three the whole of 2024), is ninth in greens in regulation, seventh in scoring average, and second in rounds under par.
She missed the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open — the last major championship on the calendar — but finished tied for third at the Chevron Championship, the first major of the year. Henderson wasn’t alone in having an early exit at the U.S. Women’s Open, however, with Ko and world No. 1 Nelly Korda also missing the cut.
Henderson has long stepped up on the game’s biggest stages, though. Per KPMG Performance Insights (the LPGA Tour’s statistical tracker) she’s first in strokes gained: total at women’s major championships since 2021.
“I feel like my game has been trending in the right direction for a long time now. Start of the season was pretty hot. I was getting a lot of good finishes, seeing some great results. That was really exciting. Kind of cooled off for a couple months but feel like I’m heading back in the right direction now. It’s a great stretch of golf to be picking up speed,” Henderson said. “It’s a good time to be trending in the right direction. Hopefully that just continues, and we’ll see a win here hopefully soon.”
Henderson’s ranking in putting average has dropped slightly from 2023 to 2024 and she’s put a new putter in the bag for this week. Funny enough, in 2016 at Sahalee she put a new putter in play on Tuesday of that week, too — a model that had just been released the day prior.
“Hoping to rekindle some magic there,” Henderson said. “Hopefully the same thing will happen.”
Henderson is one of three Canadians in the field this week along with Hamilton, Ont.’s Alena Sharp and Mississauga, Ont.’s Savannah Grewal.
This week marks the final cut-off point for the Olympic qualifiers for women’s golf. Henderson is already secured a spot for Team Canada (for the third time) with Sharp on the inside track to earn a third Olympic spot, too. Sharp is currently ranked No. 276 in the world while Grewal is No. 458.
Corey Conners and Nick Taylor earned Olympic berths on the men’s side after last week’s U.S. Open.
KPMG, the PGA of America, and the LPGA Tour announced Wednesday the purse for the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship had increased $400,000 (U.S.) for 2024 to $10.4 million with the winner getting $1.56 million — the third highest first-place prize on the 2024 schedule.
