Brooke Henderson poses with her trophy from her win in Portland, Ore., on Sunday.Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images
Click here to read The Globe's profile of Brooke Henderson from June, 2015.
At seven years old, Brooke Henderson tagged along to an amateur golf event with her older sister, Brittany, and their parents. Brooke banged balls on the driving range alongside the older girls.
"She'd just be hammering the ball," remembers Jeff Thompson, chief sport officer at Golf Canada.
A decade later, the prodigy from Smiths Falls, Ont., has made golf history. Ms. Henderson, who turns 18 in early September, scored a dominating victory on the LPGA Tour in Portland, Ore., on the weekend – only the third woman to win an LPGA event before her 18th birthday. The win was also the first by a Canadian on the LPGA in more than a decade.
"My phone," she said Monday, "was blowing up with tweets from many very awesome people."
This week, Ms. Henderson will be the main attraction at the Vancouver Golf Club, where she has arrived to contest the Canadian Pacific Women's Open, which tees off Thursday.
She is poised to become the first Canadian breakout star since Lorie Kane, who won four times on the LPGA Tour in the early 2000s, and Mike Weir on the men's side, capped by his 2003 Master's victory. Already her Portland performance has propelled her to 17th in the women's world golf rankings, up from 32nd.
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. Her victory in Portland is the culmination of a preternatural talent put through an intensive program carefully crafted by her family and Golf Canada, sharpened by sports science and underpinned by thousands of hours of practice.
The win, too, is a demarcation point in her life on the LPGA Tour. She turned pro last year, backed by the big-time agency IMG, and will be an LPGA member at the start of 2016, if not earlier. There is also the immediate beacon of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where she will be among the medal contenders in the sport's return to the Olympics.
She has homed in on a professional victory since the spring. In late April, she finished third at a tournament in San Francisco, after setting a record in the second round and falling short on Sunday by a single shot. Then, in back-to-back major tournaments, she confirmed her arrival: In June, at the Women's PGA Championship, she tied for fifth, then did the same a month later at the U.S. Women's Open.
"I've been playing great all season," Ms. Henderson said Monday.
Because she is not a tour member, she had to play a one-day qualifier just to get into the Portland tournament. But ever since San Francisco, she has felt a burgeoning confidence against the world's best. "I knew I was just as good," she said.
A fellow teenage phenom, New Zealand's Lydia Ko, an 18-year-old ranked No. 2 in the world, has played alongside Ms. Henderson for years, starting as amateurs. "I knew how good she was," Ms. Ko said. Citing San Francisco as a breakthrough for Ms. Henderson, Ms. Ko added: "Brooke's a superstar. She's pressed the accelerator since then."
For Ms. Henderson, it all began at the Smiths Falls Golf & Country Club under the tutelage of her father Dave, a skilled golfer and a former hockey goalie at the University of Toronto. In the winter, Brooke played goalie through her teen years, which she credits for some of the leg strength that powers big drives off the tee.
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. She has also benefited from Golf Canada's move two years ago to create a "young pro" squad, to support golfers as they make the transition to pro from amateur, a program whose cash comes from funds raised by the Golf Canada Foundation.
Success has attracted the notice of Own The Podium, which previously had not funded golf. Money from OTP would bolster development, said Golf Canada's Mr. Thompson. "Hopefully they'll see we have a system in place," he said. "We need the resources for the next Brooke Henderson."
Golf has become something of a young women's game, with Ms. Henderson following in the steps of Ms. Ko, Lexi Thompson and Michelle Wie. The average age of a rookie on the LPGA tour is about 24, half a decade younger than the average of 29 among PGA Tour rookies. For women, a collegiate career in the United States remains the traditional path to the LPGA Tour, but the average age has skewed lower with younger women – led by talented South Koreans – forging an alternate route through the amateur ranks.
Ms. Henderson's ascent tilted higher in 2012, at 14, when she won a Canadian Women's Tour event. The win helped land her on the front page of The Globe and Mail as a "14-year-old prodigy," and scored her a place at that year's Canadian Women's Open, when it was last played at the Vancouver Golf Club. She missed the cut, shooting nine-over. (Ms. Ko won, at 15, making her mark as the youngest-ever LPGA Tour victor.)
Ms. Henderson has since struggled at Canadian Opens, missing the cut again in 2013 and tying for 46th last year. On Monday, when she played a pro-am at the Vancouver Golf Club, she felt more assured, seeing similarities in the course to the one she won at in Portland.
Asked about the spotlight of returning home as a first-time LPGA winner, Ms. Henderson said: "I don't feel any pressure." She paused. "Right now, anyway," she added with a chuckle. Asked about the crowds, she said: "The bigger the crowd, the better."
She relishes her coming 18th birthday, Sept. 10, the first day of another major tournament, the Evian Championship, when she'll be on Lake Geneva in France for the first time.
On Monday, she did manage a bit of rest. After a late Sunday night, and the long drive to Vancouver from Portland, she got to sleep in "a little bit." She arrived to cheers at the Vancouver Golf Club.
"Hopefully," said Ms. Henderson of the week's goal, "back-to-back victories."
David Ebner