NAPLES, Fla. \u2014 The sun bursts through the Floridian palms and Brooke Henderson puts on sunglasses before launching a piercing drive that cuts through the midday cloudless sky. The shades, Henderson says, were a welcome accessory again in 2025 after eye surgery the year prior.<\/p>\n
Henderson, no longer a wunderkind and this country\u2019s best-ever golfer, had reached the limited-field season finale of the LPGA Tour for the 11th time. Eleven seasons already. She\u2019s getting older, whether fans like to hear it or not. Life changes, of course. Often for the better. She won again on home soil in August at the CPKC Women\u2019s Open held at Mississauga Golf and Country Club, and don\u2019t be surprised if the club, which has plaques on its first tee honouring each of the men who won the RBC Canadian Open on its layout in the past, bestows a deserving honour on Henderson, too.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than a decade has gone by for Henderson on the LPGA Tour, and a lot is still the same \u2014 her team, her smile, her swing. This season, however, was both thrilling and thwarting. Her win at the CPKC Women\u2019s Open in August was her first top-10 result of the season in a stroke-play tournament (the other came at the T-Mobile Match Play, where she made the quarterfinals and technically finished tied for ninth). Her only other such result came at the season finale at the CME Group Tour Championship. She was happy, of course, with a top 10 (she finished tied for seventh, while 22-year-old Jeeno Thitikul, the game\u2019s top-ranked player, won for the third time this season and repeated at Tiburon Golf Club, claiming the US$4-million first-place prize once again) to close out her year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like Thitikul now, Henderson was once a young star with limitless potential. Henderson certainly isn\u2019t old by any means, but with more than 10 years as a professional under her belt, she can\u2019t help but go back to where she came from as she thinks about where she\u2019s going<\/p>\n
\u201cI look back to who I was in 2015, and I loved the person that I was, and I loved the golfer and how I approached the different weeks and travel and life on the LPGA Tour. I\u2019m always trying to learn from that. I\u2019m not trying to go backwards,\u201d Henderson told Sportsnet, \u201cbut I\u2019m trying to learn from what was really successful and what I enjoyed and tried to carry it forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Henderson\u2019s win in Mississauga was one of three by non-Americans on the LPGA Tour winning in their home countries this year, and she was appropriately feted at the LPGA\u2019s season-ending Rolex Awards. Henderson wore a cream two-piece suit with her sister, Brittany, in tow in a matching-coloured outfit. The carpet is green, the flashes are bright, the time pieces are sparkling, and the surf-and-turf was elegant. Henderson always impresses on this night (partially because she has to, as a Rolex ambassador) since she\u2019s been to this party more than a half-dozen times.<\/p>\n
Like everything else in her career, she\u2019s done most of it already and lots of times before.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t think, though, it ever gets old.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And she remains just as energized to play well, win and do better than ever.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to pinch yourself because (this is) a dream come true and it continues to be,\u201d Henderson said. \u201cI feel like you can never take it for granted. You just have to wake up and realize what a dream it is and how grateful I am for all these opportunities I\u2019ve been given and try to make the most of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But how does one make sense of a year where there was an unprecedented spectacular high but also a collection of otherwise modest efforts?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For 2026, she\u2019s hoping for a bit more Miss Consistency versus Miss Congeniality.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Henderson said the first thing she\u2019s gunning for is a 15th win. It\u2019s a nice round number, she said with a smile. But the biggest thing she\u2019s focusing on is scoring average. It\u2019s not like she had a poor season in that category \u2014 she was 15th \u2014 but a full two shots back of Thitikul, who topped the Tour (albeit with the lowest such season-long scoring average in history). And almost all of her strokes-gained numbers were essentially identical year-over-year.<\/p>\n
A microcosm of her year as a whole? She was 81st in strokes gained: approach, a stat she was 42nd in last year, but was an impressive 14th in greens in regulation. She was hitting a ton of greens but just not very close, which led to fewer scoring chances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor most of my career, my ball striking has been the best part of my game, and I\u2019ve always counted on it a lot \u2014 so when it hasn\u2019t been as good, like this past year, you notice it. It puts stress on different parts of the game that need to step up,\u201d Henderson said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Henderson isn\u2019t quite done yet for 2025, however, as she and fellow Canadian Corey Conners will play together once again at the LPGA\/PGA Tour team event, the Grant Thornton Invitational, just before the holiday season. The Canadian duo finished second in their debuts in 2023 and tied for fourth last year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019ll also enjoy a wintertime of cheering on her hometown Ottawa Senators, with whom she signed an ambassadorship deal in 2024.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Senators owner Michael Andlauer told Sportsnet in September that when he bought the team, it was important to look at the identity of the squad, and, being a passionate golfer himself, he wanted to get in touch with Henderson to see what they could do.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing that Brooke was from Smiths Falls, you watch her composure, the way she presents herself, she\u2019s everything that is Canadian. And when I look at this city and how authentic it is and the people of Ottawa, she definitely represents our brand,\u201d Andlauer said. \u201cI wanted her to represent it. She typifies it. And she\u2019s a champion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Henderson was crafted a champion by her father (who actually grew up playing hockey against now-Senators president Cyril Leeder), who remains her coach, and sister, who remains her caddie. The team is tight and has always been there for her. In 2025, however, she added a new member to the circle \u2014 as Henderson began dating minor-league pitcher Ricky Castro. Castro, who cheered Henderson on from afar when she won in August but has since been to a few tournaments in person, pitches for the Wichita Wind Surge, the Minnesota Twins’ double-A affiliate, and they began dating in March after a happenstance meeting at Henderson\u2019s home club in Florida.<\/p>\n
Henderson said she\u2019s \u201creally grateful\u201d for Castro\u2019s support, who, of course, understands the life of a professional athlete.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI travel for a living, and all the demands that come (with it) mentally and physically. And so it\u2019s been really cool to learn about his sport too. Being a pitcher and a golfer, there are a lot of similarities, and I feel like we\u2019ve been able to learn from each other and support each other, which has been really nice,\u201d Henderson said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Canada or afar, Henderson has so much support from so many. She\u2019s given them all plenty to cheer about, even in an odd year like 2025, where there was an incredible triumph firmly in the middle of a few confounding weeks.<\/p>\n
Henderson isn\u2019t necessarily grappling with an uncertain future, but rather with how each passing accomplishment changes her legacy just a little more, which is great for her, and just as fun now as in 2015 for followers and friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a completely different person, basically,\u201d Henderson said of herself at 28 versus 18. \u201cHopefully the core is still the same, but a lot of things have changed inside and outside and within my family and my golf game \u2014 and that\u2019s life. You\u2019re always adjusting to different changes.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NAPLES, Fla. \u2014 The sun bursts through the Floridian palms and Brooke Henderson puts on sunglasses before launching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-306554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}