Brooke Henderson's wire-to-wire win provides 'dream start' to 2023 LPGA season

ORLANDO, Fla. – Brooke Henderson’s never won The Northern Star Award as Canada’s top athlete but given the way she’s busted out of the gates in 2023 – and especially with how 2022 ended – there’s a chance this could be her biggest year yet.

Henderson won the season-opening event on the LPGA Tour, the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, by four shots on Sunday. She won in wire-to-wire fashion for the third time in her career and the 13th time overall.

Thirteen times. At 25 years old.

She’s won two majors – including last year’s Amundi Evian Championship – but her win Sunday may have been the most impressive top-to-bottom effort of her career.

“Coming into this week I couldn't have asked for anything more,” said Henderson. “It was kind of the dream start, which is really exciting looking forward to the rest of 2023.”

Expectations were low to start the week. Henderson had withdrawn from the second-to-last event of the 2022 LPGA Tour season and used a “manufactured” swing, she said, to compete in the season finale. She hurt her upper back last fall and she said this week was the first time she was swinging at 100 percent since last October.

Not only that, but Henderson got her wisdom teeth in November and spent most of the time leading into the holiday season only being able to chip and putt.

While Henderson did ask her oral surgeon if there was a correlation between her teeth and her back, she confirmed the doctor said no – although she likely made some compensation with swing due to her teeth pain – which compounded everything else.

And, right, on top of that this week Henderson used clubs that she had only had in her bag for less than seven days.

Someone joked that if she wasn’t careful, there might have still been plastic wrapping on one of them.

After nearly a decade of a professional relationship with Ping (and having played Ping clubs for even longer than that as a youngster) Henderson made a big-time switch to TaylorMade for all 14 in her bag. Henderson switched to using a TaylorMade golf ball in 2022 and that agreement evolved into a full-bag situation for this year.

Henderson admitted Sunday she figured this week could have been a bit of a test-and-learn opportunity with everything – like distances and control.

Instead, Henderson was as dialled in as any of the victories in her career. She hit over 71 percent of her fairways and more than 80 percent of her greens for the week – numbers made all-the-more impressive given a swirling wind on Sunday.

“The adjustments (to my irons) were happening like right up to this week. My 3-wood I adjusted really recently, too. So, lots of things, and I think even with the victory I might adjust a few more things to make it a little bit better,” said Henderson. “I couldn't be happier how things went with them.”

So, Henderson, who at one point during the week had a six-shot cushion and just never let anyone else back in the tournament, has gone for one-for-one in 2023. The LPGA Tour’s schedule – unfortunately for the Canadian – now has a monthlong break before it heads to Asia for two events (where, fortunately for Henderson, she has always played well). The season really picks up in earnest in mid-March and the first major of the year in mid-April.

She knows everything was clicking this week in her favour – “I think all parts of the game were working really well this week, which that doesn't always happen” – but this break she said she’ll spend continuing to tighten up the distances and feels with the new clubs to come back out more adjusted.

Scary, right? The Henderson hype machine has to be in overdrive.

But she’s deserved it.

Perhaps sometimes a victim of her own success – she wins! That’s just what she does! – but coming out of the off-season full of changes and stepping on the necks of the best on Tour (the Tournament of Champions’ field is made up of only winners from the previous two season) has got to be a sign to everyone else in women’s golf that Henderson’s going to be a force to be reckoned with in 2023.

Uniquely enough, the Tournament of Champions has a pro-am format where stars of entertainment and sport play alongside the best women in golf. Annika Sorenstam, an LPGA Tour legend, was part of that field this year and played twice with Henderson. Sorenstam has done it all in women’s golf, from winning 72 times (including 10 majors) and dominating for decades.

And she was quick to heap praise on the young Canadian.

“There’s no doubt,” Sorenstam said, “she’s one of the very best LPGA players currently.”

If the first event of 2023 was any indication, Henderson is trending towards being the best of the year – and finally, perhaps, being honoured as this country’s best athlete, too.