Brooke Henderson ready for Tour Championship despite recent eye surgery

NAPLES, Fla. – Brooke Henderson is awfully familiar with Tiburon Golf Club and earning her way into the CME Group Tour Championship, the big-money season finale that puts a bow on her LPGA Tour schedule each year.

But the stretch leading into this week has been a little different than usual for the Canadian.

Henderson told Sportsnet Tuesday she had a small surgical procedure on her right eye earlier this fall, and part of her recent two-month break from competition was to help her recover from that.  

“It’s been healing really well,” the native of Smiths Falls, Ont., said with her trademark smile from Naples, where the top 60 in the Race to CME Globe standings from 2024 will compete for a total purse of $11 million, with $4 million going to the winner — the biggest first-place prize in women’s golf history.

Henderson comes into the week No. 14 in the standings thanks to eight top-10 finishes this season. Although she started the year with a bang — five of her top-10s came in the first eight events of the year, including a tie for third at the season opener and the first major on the schedule – she’s admitted the last 11 months have been a bit up-and-down. While she’s 13th in greens in regulation this year (up from 28th in 2023), she’s 125th on Tour in putting average (down 80 spots from last year), for example.

“It was kind of interesting year,” Henderson said. “I started off the year really well. I had a lot of really great top finishes and was in contention a lot, which felt really nice and then kind of cooled off there in the summer months, which was a bit unfortunate, but I feel like I’m on my way back.

“I feel like, coming into the week, I’ve been hitting the ball better than I have most of the year which is really exciting.”

Unlike on the men’s side at the Tour Championship where the top-ranked golfer in the FedExCup standings begins with a multi-shot advantage to the field, the LPGA Tour’s season-ender is wide open. Anyone, from Nelly Korda at No. 1 to Henderson at No. 14 to Carlota Ciganda at No. 60 has a chance to win the big cheque.

Korda has had the kind of year golfers can only dream about, having won seven times already (including five in a row earlier this year) including last week at The Annika presented by Gainbridge in a stunning come-from-behind effort. Korda locked up Player of the Year honours three weeks ago, with no one able to mathematically catch her. Korda, Hannah Green (three), Ruoning Yin (three), and Lydia Ko (three, plus the gold medal in Paris) are other golfers who have dominated this year who are also in the field.

Henderson has seen their play and can’t help but feel like her turn is coming soon.

“I feel like every player kind of goes through times where everything is really clicking and golf almost seems easy – like Lydia through the last half of the season and Nelly, well, the majority of the season,” Henderson said. “I just kind of feel like it gives you hope when you’re going through the times when things aren’t going as well as you would like, you just keep trying to move forward and I feel like my team and I have been doing a lot of good things.”

Henderson had just three top-10 finishes last year on the LPGA Tour so she’s managed to notch a much bigger collection of good results in 2024 – but she’s still wanting more.

Henderson said some weeks she would be hitting the ball really well and made some mental mistakes that cost her, or her mental game bailed her out and the physical side of her game wasn’t quite there. She said she learned a lot this year – even with December marking her 10th year as a professional golfer – and is eager to start putting herself in contention earlier in the week and give herself chances through the weekend in 2025.

“I think I kind of needed to go through some of the things that I went through,’ Henderson said. “I’m just hoping that I can benefit from it and actually apply it next year and just become a stronger and better player.”

This is the kind of week that Henderson could do exactly that. She’s played at Tiburon 10 times in her career already and she has finished in the top-25 nine times – including four top-10s in a five-year stretch.

Henderson finished 12th at last year’s CME Group Tour Championship as Amy Yang ran away with the title, finishing with a tournament-record 27-under 261.

The event takes place at a course Henderson is comfortable with (she also has a residence just up the highway in southwest Florida and finished runner-up alongside Corey Conners at the LPGA Tour-PGA Tour team event, the Grant Thornton Invitational, last December at Tiburon), and she’s got as good a gameplan as anyone to end the year strong.

Time for one more up in a year of ups and downs.

“I’ve had lots of solid rounds that I didn’t get the score that maybe I should have. And I know every golfer always thinks they should be playing better, but I feel like I’ve just been really close,” Henderson said.

“I feel like our time is just around the corner.”

Henderson tees off at 11:35 a.m. ET Thursday for the first round of the season finale alongside American Ally Ewing, who said after this week she is retiring from the LPGA Tour.