Brooke Henderson seeks her first Canadian Pacific Women's Open

LPGA Tour Canadian Pacific Women's Open leaderboard http://www.lpga.com/tournaments/cp-womens-open/leaderboard

As always, it will take a great performance this week in Calgary for whomever wins the  Canadian national title for women.

The field is stacked as play gets underway today, and Brooke Henderson fresh off her T7 at Rio2016 leads the Canadian contingent of 16, ( 12 pros, 4 amateurs) as she seeks her first of what she hopes would be several Canadian Pacific Women's Opens.

"Having Canadians and people from all over the world kind of celebrate this national championship is really cool,” Henderson said. “Even yesterday morning, I teed off at 8 in a pro-am, and there were people following me right from the start. My gallery kind of grew throughout the day, and as I finished, that was probably the longest autograph session that I’ve ever had.”

If Brooke is going to win it, she'll need to beat all the regular stars on the LPGA tour and at the top of that list is Lydia Ko who has an infinity for Canada having won the national championship three of the last four years, the first two as an amateur.(2012 at Vancouver GC when she was just at 15 years old with big glasses and braces on her teeth, then again in Edmonton in 2013)  Last year as a pro, she returned to Vancouver and beat Stacy Lewis in a playoff.

Brooke can take heart from the fact she beat Lydia in a playoff in June at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship for her first major title.

The tournament organizers have split them up on opposite sides of the draw with Ko out early this morning off the 10th tee with Jessica Korda and Sei Young Kim, and Brooke off the first at 1.31pm with Gerina Piller and Amy Yang

Gold medal winner Inbee Park is not here, but all the rest are including Lorie Kane, making her record-tying 26th straight appearance and this year she is being inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame.

Also remember that Suzann Pettersen won the tournament on this Priddis Greens course in 2009, horses for courses is the old adage...

Bryan Angus