With the Olympics, the major championships, and the CPKC Women’s Open now in the rearview mirror for Brooke and Brittany Henderson, the pair of Golf Town Athletes are looking forward to a break before it’s a sprint to the finish line of the 2024 LPGA Tour season.
We caught up with Brittany as she was in the midst of a near seven-week stretch of off time from the LPGA Tour – a stretch that’s longer than their real off-season!
“Summer is a lot – and you expect it to be,” Brittany says. “You’ve got such a packed schedule especially with the Olympics being added. You go into the heat of the season, and you know it’s going to be a lot, and you just try to be prepared as best you can.
“We pushed really hard. And we did what we could. And then you just really need a break. It was a lot of travel and (it) was a good time to try to get rejuvenated and reflect a little bit on what we did well and where we could get better to finish the season!”
Since we last caught up with Brittany, the sister duo was getting ready to head to Paris for the Olympics. Brooke ended up finishing tied for 13th and was in the mix for a medal through most of the final day.
“It was a really cool atmosphere to play in,” Brittany explains. “The course was really great. Really challenging. It was a good test.
“It was a very cool and full Olympic experience this time. I feel like they really embraced it in France. There were so many fans. They said the golf course could hold 30,000 people per day, and they pretty much said they were sold out.”
Beyond the golf course, however, was the rest of the Olympic experience for Brooke and Brittany.
During the competition they stayed at the hotel that was actually right on the golf course property – which made sense since the Olympic village was over an hour away, and that was with good traffic! After the golf tournament wrapped up, they did stay in the village with their fellow athletes for one night.
Brittany says, one night, they watched Athletics after their competition was over in the gigantic Olympic stadium that held just under 80,000 people. With a laugh she says, since they arrived late, that there were people in their seats – which were smack in the middle of a very long row. Brittany and Brooke are pretty reserved people, Brittany explains, so they didn’t want to ask the people to get out of their seats. But a nice older man overheard them talking to the usher and went and did it for them!
The coolest part of that night, Brittany says, was how many sports are all running simultaneously. There was a relay race, but also javelin throw and high jump and others.
“There was always something to watch. You got to watch multiple sports and people were earning their medals. It was very neat,” Brittany says.
The Olympic Village accommodations were very much like a hotel, Brittany says, with athletes coming in and out depending on the schedule of their events. The rooms were barebones but did have everything they needed – although the beds were made of cardboard boxes! It was firm, Brittany says with a laugh, but it did make sense for the environment, since the beds were really only used for two weeks.
The sisters got to walk in the Closing Ceremonies to represent Canada and Brittany says she was in “awe” of the atmosphere and all the people around. Where Team Canada ended up stopping on the track as they walked in was also right in front of where the Prime Minister of France was watching everything unfold.
“Just walking in and hearing the applause and being part of Team Canada was really surreal,” Brittany says.
After the closing ceremonies had completed, Brittany and Brooke headed to the dining hall – along with so many others around midnight. But no issue there, as dining in the Olympic Village was open 24 hours per day! Dining in Rio (in 2016) was all done in one huge tent but in Paris it was sectioned off in six different rooms. You couldn’t see the vastness of it all like in Rio, Brittany says, but there were flags lining the dining area with every country that had athletes competing.
As far as competing for the rest of this season, Brittany says she and Brooke are looking forward to getting back out there after they have their deserved reset.
“We love golf, and we love to play,” Brittany says. “But to have the opportunity to feel really excited again and to get playing tournaments and have that pep in your step and get eager again is really valuable.”
Look for Brittany and Brooke to be back in action for the Asian Swing and finish the year strong!