“I hope to do it as long as I can, as long as life allows, I guess.”
Even a caddie gets autograph and selfie requests sometimes.
That’s how it is most weeks for Brittany Henderson, but this week’s CP Women’s Open in Ottawa takes things to an other level for the 31-year-old from Smiths Falls.
A decent golfer in her own right — Quebec junior champion, a four-year U.S. college player inducted into the Coastal Carolina University athletics hall of fame and a pro on what was then the second-tier Symetra Tour — she has become mostly celebrated as older sister and caddie for LPGA Tour superstar Brooke Henderson.
Brittany has carried the bag for 11 of Brooke’s 12 LPGA Tour titles, including a pair of major championships.
“This is definitely a special one,” Brittany Henderson said Tuesday in between the conclusion of her sibling’s nine-hole practice round and more pre-tournament on-course reconnaissance for the LPGA Tour event at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club.
“I knew so many people in the crowd today. You don’t normally have crowds (for practice rounds) on Tuesdays, so that was different. I feel like I know everybody, or maybe they’re even members here and you have seen them around a little bit.”
The Henderson sisters have been famously tight both on and off the course, and it surely sounds as if that relationship played a role in Brittany’s decision to relinquish her own playing career and go to work for Brooke, who had turned pro late in 2014, at age 17, not long after she ascended to No. 1 in the women’s world amateur golf rankings.
They caddied for each other roughly a half-dozen times in 2015, with Brittany playing on the Symetra Tour and Brooke’s tournaments split between Symetra and the LPGA Tour. However, Brittany also skipped a couple of events she expected to enter to caddie for Brooke in major championships in Britain and France.
That fall, with family friend Bunk Lee as caddie, Brooke won a tournament at Portland, Ore., which led to a successful application for an exemption to the LPGA Tour’s 18-and-over age requirement. It also precipitated a life-changing decision for Brittany.
That’s how it is most weeks for Brittany Henderson, but this week’s CP Women’s Open in Ottawa takes things to an other level for the 31-year-old from Smiths Falls.
A decent golfer in her own right — Quebec junior champion, a four-year U.S. college player inducted into the Coastal Carolina University athletics hall of fame and a pro on what was then the second-tier Symetra Tour — she has become mostly celebrated as older sister and caddie for LPGA Tour superstar Brooke Henderson.
Brittany has carried the bag for 11 of Brooke’s 12 LPGA Tour titles, including a pair of major championships.
“This is definitely a special one,” Brittany Henderson said Tuesday in between the conclusion of her sibling’s nine-hole practice round and more pre-tournament on-course reconnaissance for the LPGA Tour event at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club.
“I knew so many people in the crowd today. You don’t normally have crowds (for practice rounds) on Tuesdays, so that was different. I feel like I know everybody, or maybe they’re even members here and you have seen them around a little bit.”