10 years into pro career, Brooke Henderson stands as greatest Canadian golfer ever

SMITHS FALLS, Ont. — Brooke Henderson’s first day-to-day manager when she signed with global representation behemoth IMG, Gabe Codding, was filling up his rental car after visiting the Canadian wunderkind for the first time and says, with a laugh, he felt like he was going to die because of the cold. Now the director of marketing at the City of Rancho Mirage in California, Codding lives in the literal desert. He, of course, doesn’t own a real winter jacket, nor a hat, nor a scarf.

Codding was more prepared for his next visit as Henderson began her march to stardom as this country’s best young golfer. The wintertime is always special for Henderson, who grew up playing hockey and still loves Christmas on the lake with her family, but less so for Codding.

Dec. 18, specifically, is a date neither will forget. This year, that particular day marks the 10-year anniversary of Henderson announcing she was turning professional.

And a star was born.

For so many, Henderson is still a kid. Just 27, with plenty more to come in the future as a “big star” of the LPGA Tour, says outgoing commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan. Looking back, a celebrated golfing lifetime has already happened.

Henderson has the most wins of any Canadian on either the LPGA Tour or PGA Tour with 13 — including two majors — and all that’s left is for her to add to that total. It’s no longer hyperbolic to say Henderson is this country’s greatest golfer ever. Whatever the number of victories she ends her career with will likely never be topped.

And if you look at recent golfers who, in 10 years or less on the LPGA Tour have at least 10 wins to their name, it’s iconic first name-only types — Nelly, Lexi, Lydia. Plus, Brooke.

“It’s hard to put into words,” Codding, a crack in his voice, told Sportsnet. “It’s actually really emotional. You just see people who carry a light and a kindness about them. Early on, I just really knew her from record and name and then when you meet her — there was just something there.”

As Henderson celebrates the 10th anniversary of her life-changing decision to become a professional golfer, the only question left is how much brighter can her star get?

Henderson was long on the radar of the game’s biggest power brokers even as a young teenager. As an amateur, she won more than 50 times and ascended to No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. She also won three professional events as an amateur — two Canadian Women’s Tour events plus the 2014 PGA of Canada Women’s Championship. One of her wins on the Canadian Women’s Tour came in 2012 when she was just 14 (and nine months and three days), which made her the youngest player, male or female, to ever win a professional golf event at the time.

Derek Ingram oversaw Canada’s women’s national team for a couple of years — he’s now the men’s team head coach and works with Corey Conners and Taylor Pendrith — and first witnessed Henderson’s incredible gift when she was just 14. The first time Ingram watched Henderson was at the Spirit International, a junior event just outside of Houston. She drank about a dozen Sprites that week — “I am not going to say anything, she’s the best player here. The last thing I’m doing is taking the Sprite off the table” — and beat everyone with a set of mismatched clubs.

“And she is stuffing it. Every shot,” Ingram continued. “This was something special.

“This is something I may never see in my lifetime again.”

When the tournament was over, Henderson told Ingram she was thinking about going to the University of Florida to play golf (Henderson grew up a big fan of the school, and even had her room painted with the blue-and-orange colours). Ingram, on the way home from the course, told Henderson that there was “no chance” that she was going to college for golf. If she did, Ingram remembers saying, he hadn’t done his job.

“Finally, I was like, ‘You’re already better than all of them right now. You’re not going there. You’re going to the LPGA Tour,’” Ingram said.

Sure enough, Henderson continued to stack up her impressive results through the next few summers until things peaked in 2014, when she finished 10th at the U.S. Women’s Open as an amateur. That’s when she moved from IMG’s ‘players to watch’ list to the ‘players to go after’ list, according to Jay Burton, the senior vice president of golf clients.

In September of 2014, Brooke and her father, Dave, drove from Smiths Falls and Burton drove from Cleveland to have a multi-hour meeting in Toronto along with Sam Galet, who was then the managing director of IMG’s Toronto office. At that point, Henderson had already been denied early access to the LPGA Tour because of her age. But she had decided she was turning pro regardless. The key question was about where she could play.

“It became clear to me that the more we got involved quickly to line up sponsor invites to 2015 the better our chances would be to sign her,” Burton said.

Dave Henderson told Burton that there were other suitors so they would be taking their time with the decision, but Burton told the Hendersons that it wasn’t too early to start putting out some feelers about sponsor invites for the first half of 2014 — which flipped a business switch across the table.

The Hendersons granted what Burton calls a “hunting license” for the agency (which is now rebranded to WME Sports) to start engaging tournament directors about potential spots for the next year. Once things started rolling, the agency-player deal was finalized in short order.

Golf Canada became one of Henderson’s first sponsors, along with Ping — announced together when she turned pro. Funny enough, Burton recalls, Ping’s head office in Arizona initially said they “probably wouldn’t” sign Henderson. About three weeks later Burton got a call back as the American office of Ping spoke to the Canadian office and, well, they got the real rundown about how good Henderson could be. The official announcement came just before the holiday season in 2014, with RBC becoming a sponsor of Henderson’s in the first quarter of 2015. The bank remains a key corporate partner that’s still along for the ride.