Canadian teen Henderson opens up five-stroke lead

She’s only the third player to win such a title before turning 18 and she is the first Canadian, regardless of age, to win an LPGA Tour event since Lorie Kane of Charlottetown won the Takefuji Classic in 2001 – when Henderson was a three-year-old.

Henderson may soon, if she isn’t already, be the face of women’s golf in Canada.

Brooke Henderson got her breakthrough LPGA Tour victory.

Brooke Henderson did her best to take any drama away from Sunday’s final round of the $1.3 million LPGA Cambia Portland Classic at Columbia Edgewater Country Club. “I got one from Gary Player which meant a lot to me”.

“There was a little bit of tree issue” on her second shot, “not much, but I was thinking about going to the right of the green because there was a bunker guarding the left side where the pin was”. “I was up to nearly 80 text messages a couple of hours afterwards and a lot of emails from a lot of family members and friends”.

NOTES: Henderson joins Lydia Ko and Lexi Thompson as the only players to win an LPGA Tour event before they turned 18.

The making of Brooke Henderson marks the emergence of another premier Canadian athlete outside the realm of hockey, alongside stars in such sports as basketball and tennis.

Behind Henderson and Masson at 9 under were Candie Kung of Taiwan, Jenny Shin of South Korea and Julieta Granada of Paraguay. “All [the LPGA] has to do is bring a motion forward to the table and vote on it. That’s what we’re hoping that [they give] her a chance”. In nine LPGA Tour events this year, she has amassed $466,264 in earnings.

“It was really solid, fun, and, yeah, I’m excited about that round”, said Masson, who played in the morning, before the afternoon rain buffeted the course. She’s ranked 44th in the official Rolex world rankings. Without any status on the LPGA Tour, she has had to rely on sponsor exemptions and Monday qualifying to play. Which is why the LPGA has rightly been so miserly in granting membership to youngsters, knowing full well they would otherwise be deluged with requests, majority unjustified.

Next up for Henderson: her home open, the Canadian Pacific Women’s Open.

Her win on Sunday gets her into next month’s Evian Championship in France, where she will celebrate her 18th birthday, and the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship in November. The final top 10 will earn 2016 LPGA Tour cards.

“It’s definitely my putting”, Pressel said of what fueled her round. About the fourth hole on my back nine I said, ‘Let’s go make some birdies, ‘ and I was able to do that. “I’ve been hitting it really well”. She said she had not thought about which way to go.

Henderson has been nearly unerring the first two rounds of the tournament, with only a single bogey and 14 birdies through 36 holes.

By her early teens, Ms. Henderson was in the orbit of Golf Canada, on its development squad, which provided expert coaching and sports science, helped develop a plan for competition schedules, and organized regular training camps, especially in winter in Florida or Arizona.